Sweet Sixteen?
by Shadow Jaganshi
Summary: Nothing good can come from Shadow and Eclipse's sixteenth birthdays. And a motorcycle. And a birthday party. And various other doomiful things.
1. I Must Become One With The Rock

**(10-12-04)  
"Warnings": **Can't really say that there's much to warn you about, except this is my very slight Hiei/Shadow romance kinda thing a lot of people have been saying I should do... It's not a major part of the fic, so don't get excited or worried, whichever you would get over that... There's probably cussing, discussion of sex, having children, stuff like that... But that's all kinda to be expected in my stories, isn't it? I'm a psycho! Yeeha and stuff! :groans tiredly and walks away shivering:

**CHAPTER ONE  
**I Must Become One With The Rock

Shadow sighed. She looked up at the ceiling for a second, watching a miniscule gnat fly around, promptly get caught in the web of one of many spiders inhabiting her living room due to her sparse cleaning schedule, and get nothing more than a glare from the giant arachnid. The spider was more suited for eating horseflies than gnats... The girl made a mental note to make a mental note to put a note on the fridge telling Hiei to clean the house.

The only sound in the room, surprisingly, was that of Hiei flipping pages in the magazine he was looking at- some sports magazine Yusuke had left lying in the basement about half a year ago. It had recently been discovered by total fluke when Shadow walked into a cobweb big enough to catch a horse in and found the magazine hanging in the web. She'd caught the offending spider in a cat carrier and let it out in the forest behind the house. Of course, she'd had a nice conversation with it first, something about the price of gas rising at an unbelievable rate, or perhaps it was more on the topic of the spider's odd ability to speak Japanese...

Hiei sighed heavily, stared at the magazine he'd been flipping through, and flung it carelessly off to the side, flipping over to lie on his back on the couch and stare up at the ceiling. He made some noise, a mixture between disgust and annoyance, before closing his eyes and reminding himself to avoid looking at the ceiling.

Now that I've demonstrated my ability to write a paragraph consisting of stuff that had no point or importance but wasn't completely stupid, or perhaps it was, I'll get on with it.

"Hey Hiei," Shadow said, staring up at the spider.

"Eh?" Barely an acknowledgement.

"Know what today is?"

"Uhn..." Translation: Wednesday, but I assume that's not what you meant, and I don't particularly care for guessing games, so spit it out.

"It's very special."

"Hmm..." Hiei murmured, dozing off.

"I'M SIXTEEN, AND I'M GETTIN' A MOTORCYCLE!" Shadow screeched. Hiei's eyes snapped open, the spider shot back into the darkest corner of its web, and a flock of birds that had been resting on the roof exploded into the air.

"WHY DID YOU NOT INFORM ME OF THIS?"

"I did!"

"When?!"

"Not even ten seconds ago!"

Hiei just sighed heavily. "I knew it was _soon_, but 'soon' is about all the more specific it got..."

"How'd you know it was soon?"

Hiei mocked Shadow's tone. "'My birthday's soon! I'll be sixteen and I'm getting a motorcycle!'"

"Oh yeah!"

"Why didn't you tell me a little bit earlier? I'd have sent Kurama off to buy you a present and say it was from me."

"How thoughtful of you! I didn't tell you earlier because I just picked today at random. I'm not real sure my exact date of birth, cuz my parents never made a deal out of it when they were _still alive_, even my human mother. And when either of them _did_ mention my birthday, I never knew the exact date cuz we didn't have calendars! I just kept track of the years, knew it was mentioned sometime in the late spring or early summer, so, I just... chose a day! Since today was boring, I decided it was as good a day as any other! Spice it up a bit, y'know?"

"My God..." Hiei muttered. "You just spontaneously decide 'Hey! I wanna be sixteen today!' and you are? You know when you tell Kurama that he'll flip out."

"My problem? No!"

"I'm sure you'll get this lecture from him, b--"

"Then you don't need to tell me!" Shadow said cheerfully. Then she danced away singing "I'm sixteee-eeen, I'm six-teee-eeen!!" Hiei just sighed. The baka girl froze next to the calendar hanging on the wall and looked at it.

"Well, better mark today! It's official now!" She put a big smiley face on April 14th. Hiei shuffled over and looked at it.

"You're one sad individual."

"When's _your_ birthday, Hiei?"

"Does that matter?"

"YES! Maybe not in Makai, but it does in Ningenkai! People think it odd when you don't even know your own birthday! What date do you write on job applications when it asks the date of birth?"

"October somethingith or something," Hiei said, shrugging.

"Okee dokee!" Shadow went back into song, not particularly caring what Hiei'd had to say. She stopped and grinned.

"I can't wait until Kurama gets off school today! And Eclipse, too! Speaking of Eclipse... She hasn't been around for a couple days, has she?"

"No."

"Oh well!"

Shadow proceeded to dance out onto the porch and scream at the top of her lungs that she was sixteen and her wrath would soon be upon the highways and roads and sidewalks of Japan. However, the people in California also cringed away from the voice that had become somewhat familiar to them, the voice that caused tsunami's and typhoons and hurricanes and tricked highly religious bakas into believing it was the voice of God.

Okay, maybe not quite that bad...

So, later that day, Kurama showed up and was tackled before he'd even set foot inside the house.

"KURAMA! GUESS WHAT? I'M SIXTEEN TODAY!" Shadow squealed, pinning him on the porch.

"I heard," he said.

"You did?"

"Yeah, when you screamed it really loud this morning sometime... And also, Hiei contacted me in the middle of my English class while I was attempting to present a report on Japanese mythology in spoken English... And that threw me off track and I got a 99 on my presentation instead of a hundred," Kurama said, all the while digging in his uniform pockets. He pulled out a bit of pocket lint and set it on Shadow's head.

"Happy birthday, have a hat," he said dryly. Shadow grinned.

"Yay! Mooshie-poo!" She stood up and took off her 'hat' to admire it. "Wow..."

Kurama got up. "I figured you'd be pleased enough with that, but I got you a real gift," he said, opening his school bag and pulling out a small wrapped gift.

"You did! How very sweet of you!" Shadow said cheerfully, taking the small box and holding it against her chest, grinning. "My first birthday present..." Tearing it open like a psycho, with much more elaborate psychotic motion than was necessary to unwrap a small gift like that, she discovered a necklace with a wolf pendant and a charm bracelet sporting a single silver charm: a rose. A smile spread across her face.

"YOU'RE THE BESTEST FRIENDY-FRIEND EVER TO EXIST, KURAMA!" She hugged him.

"Yeah, well you're suffocating me," he said in a choked voice. She let go and grinned up at him. He caught his breath and pointed to the charm bracelet. "You'll be getting more charms for that soon."

"Huh?"

"Never mind, you'll see."

"Way cool," Shadow said, putting on the bracelet and necklace. "Shiny... You're still my bestest friendy-friend, Kurama! Now all I need is my driver's license and a motorcycle and this'll be the bestesty bestestest birthday anyone could ever have!"

Kurama stared. "That'll be harder than you make it sound, Shadow..."

"Why? I'm sixteen, I can get my license! You got yours when _you_ were sixteen, didn't you?"

"Yes, Shadow, but that's different..."

"HOW SO?"

"I was born in Ningenkai, so I exist in all ningen legal files. I have a birth certificate, school records, all that. You, however, were born in Makai, came here and pretty much only exist in reality to the people who see you. You have no school records, no birth certificate, nothing. There's all sorts of procedures and requirements... Hey! Are you listening to me?!"

Shadow was asleep standing up. Kurama stared for a second. Hiei walked out the door, past Shadow, and into the yard, noticing and fully comprehending the situation but choosing to ignore it. With a sigh as Hiei strolled out of sight, Kurama nudged Shadow.

"Wake up."

"But I just want a motorcycle, mommy," she mumbled sleepily. Kurama groaned.

"Wake up, Shadow, and we'll see about getting you some credentials to officialize your existence," Kurama said dryly.

"Who ever said anything about getting a driver's license, anyway?" Shadow snapped, awake suddenly. "I won't _need_ it."

"_You_ said something about getting a driver's license, and you WILL need it!"

"Nuh-uh!"

"YOU NEED IT TO DRIVE!"

"I'VE DRIVEN BEFORE WITHOUT ONE!"

"BUT NOBODY SAW YOU!"

"YES THEY _DID_!!!"

"NOT COPS! BUT WITH YOUR DRIVING SKILLS, YOU'LL BARELY BE ABLE TO GET ON THE STUPID BIKE BEFORE THE SIRENS COME SCREAMING AFTER YOU!"

"I CAN DRIVE FINE, THANKS!"

"_SURE YA CAN!_"

"**YOU'RE EVIL!**"

"**I KNOW!**"

"**_I HATE YOU!!!_**"

Kurama blinked, startled. "Sor-RY!"

"Don't be," Shadow pouted, crossing her arms. "I hate you. You're just wasting your apology... Ya don't mean it, anyway."

There was silence for about two seconds and Shadow was about to open her eyes when she felt lips against hers. Her eyes snapped open and she saw silver hair. With a strangled yell, she flung herself back away from the fox, spitting and gagging and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"WHERE THE HELL DID YOU COME FROM, FOX? WHAT ARE YOU DOING KISSING ME WITHOUT WARNING?"

"I couldn't help it... You're so cute when you pout."

"I wasn't pouting!" Shadow retorted angrily.

"You were so," Youko said gently, smiling lovingly.

"Was not."

"Were too."

"Was not."

"So adorable..." Youko said, grinning.

"I'm not adorable, either! I'm evil! I'm sixteen now! I'll get a motorcycle and run you over with it!" Shadow said, pointing her finger at his eye.

"So cold," the fox said sadly.

"I KNOW! THANK YOU!"

Youko was grinning again. "Hiei isn't here, you know."

"So what?"

"So I can harass you and nobody's here to stop me."

"I'LL BEAT YOU TILL YOU TRANSFORM!" Shadow threatened. Youko started to kiss her again. She pushed him away and slapped him. Hard. He looked dazed.

"Ow..."

"Psycho."

"But don't you want birthday kisses?"

"Not from you!"

"Would you rather have birthday spankings?"

Shadow slapped him again.

"Hey, Shadow! I'd say happy birthday, but you don't look very happy." Yusuke came up the porch steps with a small shiny gift bag in his hand, Kuwabara not far behind with a nearly identical bag.

"Yusuke! Hi!" Shadow said cheerfully.

"Hey," Yusuke said. Then he looked up at Youko. "Hey Youko."

"Yeah, it's Youko, the stupid smart old fox, come to harass me on my first birthday," Shadow said miserably, trying to make him feel guilty. It worked.

Youko sighed. "Fine, fine, jeez, I don't see why you always want Shuichi around anyway... I'm much better looking... Happy birthday..."

A few seconds later, the unwilling Youko had given up on making Shadow feel guilty, or feel anything at all, for that matter, and Shuichi Kurama was apologizing to Shadow for the fox's perverted behavior on her birthday and assuring her Youko wouldn't be around for the rest of the day.

"He better not be," Shadow warned, then, with a threatening glare at Kurama as she turned, she looked at Yusuke. "Hi!"

"_Now_ it's a happy birthday," Yusuke said, handing Shadow his gift. She pulled out two things: A polished black stone and another charm for her bracelet. This one was a simple little circle painted blue and green to represent Earth.

"Nice!" Shadow said, grinning.

"What's with the charm?" Kuwabara asked. "How does a little blue and green circle represent you in any way?"

"It's Earth, baka, and it's symbolic of me because I'M THE ONE THAT'S ALWAYS SAVING THE STUPID THING!" Yusuke shouted, hitting Kuwabara in the head. "And what appreciation do I get for it? None!"

Shadow gave him a big hug. "Thank you for saving the world, Yusuke."

"Uh, sure... No problem..."

"We'd all be _DEAD_ without _you_," she continued overdramatically and semi-sarcastically.

"I'm sure we would," Kurama taunted sarcastically.

"Anyway, uh, happy birthday," Kuwabara said, handing Shadow the gift bag he'd brought. "And hey Yusuke, what's with the rock you gave her?"

"It's a pretty black rock!" Shadow said cheerfully. "And if you stare at it long enough, it still looks like a pretty black rock!" She pulled out Kuwabara's gift. "Woohoo!"

Yes, another charm. Can you tell that when Kurama told them it was her birthday, he also told them exactly what to get her? A charm for the bracelet he'd bought her, one that they thought represented themselves, so Shadow could always remember them in case she happened to forget them for some odd reason... Well actually I guess it wouldn't be odd for _her_ to forget them, because her memory is like, five minutes long, remember...

Kuwabara's charm was a roaring lion's head... Apparently he thinks very highly of himself...

"The 'pretty black rock' is for training your tiny little mind, Shadow," Yusuke said as the girl started to attach her new charms to the bracelet Kurama'd gotten her.

"Oh?" she said, barely paying attention as she fumbled with the bracelet.

"You meditate. Concentrate your energy into it, and try to get it to take another shape. It's not a normal 'pretty black rock.' I got it ages ago... Someplace... And I managed to make it into over fifty different shapes."

"Woohoo," Shadow said halfheartedly, sitting on the porch, still struggling with the charm. She growled and glared and bit the chain and cussed at it before Kurama finally knelt beside her and put his hand over hers to stop her from furthering the frustration she was feeling from the stupidity of it all. Then he easily did what Shadow had tried so hard to do: he attached the charms to the chain links of the bracelet. The girl's face lit up when he let go.

"Woohoo!" she cheered.

"So, how many shapes d'you think _Shadow_ will make from that stone?" Kuwabara asked Yusuke skeptically after observing her incompetence.

"I think it'll be staying in its rock form for quite a while..." Yusuke sighed.

"So anyway, can I leave you three alone?" Kurama asked. "I need to run a couple errands."

"ON MY BIRTHDAY??!" Shadow screamed. "Some bestest friend you are, running _errands_ on my birthday..."

"Yes, but you'll be happy when I get back, I promise."

"...Oh... Fine then..."

"Bye." He crossed the yard to his car, got in, and left in the same direction Hiei had gone earlier. Ooooh, coincidence or conspiracy?! Cue Twilight Zone music...

"So Yusuke, how're you?" Shadow asked.

"I'm fine."

"You know we're still standing on the porch."

"I noticed."

"You can go inside if you want. I'm gonna sit here and stare at the shiny pebble," Shadow said, holding up the rock he'd given her.

"Call me if it changes," Yusuke said, walking inside.

"Yes ma'am," Shadow said. He ignored her, as anybody with half a brain learns to do after a while...

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

An unfamiliar car came to a halt outside Shadow's house. The car itself was an unfamiliar blue Mustang convertible, but the people in it were familiar friends of Shadow's.

Eclipse got out of the driver's seat, grinning. Hiei grabbed a gift bag out of the back seat before jumping out of the car.

"I'm never riding with you again," he said, horrified.

"What? I'm a fine driver!"

"You...?" Hiei snorted. "I bet _I_ could drive better than that."

"NOT MY BABY!" Eclipse screeched, hugging her car. Hiei inched away. Kurama pulled up behind the convertible, careful to stay far enough away that when Eclipse pulled out, she wouldn't mash into his car and blame him for it, as he knew she would if something like that should happen.

After enduring severe abuse for telling Eclipse that talking to her car did it no good because it couldn't hear her and had no mind anyway, Hiei managed to pry the girl away from her shiny new vehicle and lead the way up to the porch, where Shadow had been sitting for the past two hours staring at a rock.

"Hey Shadow," Eclipse said. Shadow shushed her.

"I must become _one_ with the rock," she said. They waited patiently while she stared for the next two minutes before Hiei got fed up with it and used his energy to trick Shadow into believing she'd been the one to turn the small black rock into a tiny bloodthirsty weasel figure.

"Woohoo! I-- Hey, what's in the bag?" Shadow said, instantly distracted. Hiei handed it to her.

"Happy birthday from me," he said. The bag contained multiple things, most of them being fire, dragon, or bloodthirsty rabid weasel related (a lot of it being jewelry as well). There was also a small lava lamp which instantly appealed to Shadow's senses as she stared at it with a retarded smile for several minutes.

"Perty..." she mumbled.

Yes, there was a charm as well. A dragon, of course! What else?

"Happy birthday from me," Eclipse said, handing Shadow a brain charm.

"A BRAIN!"

"Yep! It represents my unbelievable intelligence," Eclipse said cheerfully. "There's also this one." A raindrop, apparently to represent Eclipse's water demon side... Of course, we all know that a _frog_ would better represent her, but she apparently didn't think so... (heh heh)

"Done yet?" Hiei asked under his breath.

"Yup!"

Hiei braced himself for some reason unapparent at the moment. Then he reached in his pocket and drew out a key chain holding one key.

"Happy birthday from Eclipse and me," he said, holding the key out to Shadow. She looked at it for a second, blinked in a confused sort of way, then noticed Kurama grinning. He leaned over and whispered something in her ear and pointed. She followed his finger and looked to the two parked cars. Then her eyes fell on the third vehicle, the one on the trailer behind Kurama's car. Her eyes widened and she smiled so big it threatened to fall off her face. Slowly, she turned back to look at Hiei, still braced and still holding out the key. She snatched it from his hand and hugged him tightly.

"I LOVE YOU!"

Barely half a split second later, Yusuke and Kuwabara had their faces plastered against the screen door, looking around frantically.

"What's going on?" they asked in unison.

Shadow was clinging to Hiei like she'd never let go.

"IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou!" she said, over and over and over.

"We've established that, Shadow," Kurama said, grinning.

"Why does she love him all of a sudden?" Yusuke asked. Kurama pointed out the motorcycle. "What?! I didn't get a motorcycle on MY sixteenth birthday! You guys are such sexists!"

Meanwhile, Shadow was still clinging to Hiei.

"IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou!!!"

"Wow. Quite an effect that had," Kurama said to no one in particular, staring at the fire demons. "Eclipse _did_ pay for half of it..."

"Thank you Eclipse," Shadow said between her "I love you"s to Hiei.

"I think we're gonna be here for a while," Hiei sighed.

"Kiss her!" Yusuke suggested excitedly. "Youko did!"

Hiei's head snapped up and he glared slightly at Kurama.

"Sorry," the redhead said quickly, holding up his hands in surrender.

Shadow finally relaxed her death hug on poor Hiei and stepped back slightly.

"I'm so happy I could die! But I won't, cuz then I wouldn't get to enjoy having a motorcycle! And also, you'd be really miserable."

Then... Their eyes met...

... And Shadow and Hiei kissed (for real this time, not to freak out Kuwabara).

Insert background of pink and yellow bubbles and cheesy romantic music while Yusuke watches gleefully.

"Wow," Yusuke said when they finally broke apart. "Fire demon lung capacity must be something amazing..."

Hiei was slightly pink, but, uh, that could have been the way the sunlight was hitting him, yes, just a trick of sunlight tricking your easily tricked ningen eyes! ...Yeah, that's it... Of course... After all, Hiei would _never_ blush.

"So can I go ride it now?!" Shadow asked excitedly.

"You still need your license. That's where Kurama comes in... but... Yeah, fine, go for it," Hiei said, grinning a little.

"But first you need your riding gear, which will be found in the back seat of my car," Kurama added before she took off.

Shadow looked at him curiously, then went across the yard and opened he back door of his car. She came back to the porch carrying a box and a helmet. After peeking into the box, she cast a mock-suspicious look at Kurama, looked back at the contents of the box, and set down her helmet.

"I'll be right back," she said, walking into the house.

"You'd best go get that thing off the trailer doohicky," Eclipse said to Kurama. "She'll tear it off when she gets back if you don't."

Yusuke was more interested in interrogating Hiei about the kiss.

"I saw tongues," he said, grinning mischievously. There was that pink again in Hiei's cheeks. "YOU'RE BLUSHING!"

"I am not!"

"Aw, it's so cute! Hiei's blushing! Did his little girlyfriend kiss him in front of all his friendies?" Yusuke taunted in a childlike mocking tone.

"I'm not blushing," Hiei snapped firmly.

"That was quite a kiss, though, Hiei! I'd never expect something like that when _you're_ involved! Very passionate," Yusuke said knowledgeably, nodding.

"Shut up! You're nuts!"

"Hiei's in looooove!"

"No I'm not!"

"Denying it will only make him believe it further, Hiei," Kurama advised.

"Aw, wittle Hiei denying he's got a wittle girlyfriend... How cute..." Yusuke said. Hiei's eye twitched. The spirit detective continued in his normal tone. "It's really quite obvious, Hiei, you know? You say there's nothing going on, but you two are definitely more than friends..."

Hiei decided to use Kurama's advice. "So what if we are?"

"What?"

"I said 'so what if we are more than friends?' Is there something wrong with that?" Hiei asked dryly. Yusuke's mouth moved soundlessly.

"Man, you're no fun," he said finally, sulking. Shadow came bursting out the door a second later, hitting Yusuke in the back and sending him flying.

"It's a perfect fit!" she said cheerfully, modeling her new outfit. "How did you know?"

Kurama pointed silently at Hiei, trying so hard to control Youko that he couldn't speak words out loud for fear they'd be Youko's words and not his.

Shadow looked at Hiei. "And how did YOU know my exact size?"

"Um..."

"Never mind, I don't care right now," she said, grinning. "I'm just so HAPPY that I could probably be nice to YOUKO right now!"

Kurama screamed at Youko inside his head, really wishing Shadow hadn't said that, cuz now the spirit fox was getting ideas.

Yusuke and Kuwabara, meanwhile, were gawking wordlessly.

"Eee," Yusuke finally managed, still lying in the grass where he'd ended up after being hit with the door.

"Right! I wanna try out my new motorcycle!" Shadow said cheerfully, grabbing her helmet and leading Kurama out to his car. He got the motorcycle off the trailer and about two minutes later, Shadow flew down the road on it. Yusuke came scrambling up to the group.

"That is really freaking tight leather," he said in a high-pitched voice, looking up at Hiei (Yusuke hadn't managed to get up off the ground yet). "Whose idea was that?"

"Not mine," Eclipse said instantly.

"Well, it was semi partially a tiny bit Hiei's, a little teeny bit mine, and the majority of it was Youko," Kurama said guiltily. "He kinda... Convinced us."

"But I'm not complaining about his perversion for once," Hiei said, then promptly realized what he'd said and dissolved into nothingness at the look he got from Yusuke.

"You're more of a lecher than I thought! How the hell did you know her measurements, anyway?!" he asked.

"I live with her. Little details like that just... kinda... well... Okay!!! So maybe she didn't exactly give them willingly..." Hiei admitted, blushing (err, I mean, the sun was hitting his face just so!) again. "But Kurama, Eclipse, and I have kinda been planning this for a while, we just expected a little more notice, like an exact date, maybe... So, yeah, I guess I kinda maybe sort measured her when she was asleep the other day... But it wasn't all my idea! Youko made me! It was either I did it or he did!"

"WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!" Shadow cheered, flying back up the road.

"Well I'm not complaining... I'm just thinking even more so now than before that there is without a doubt something more than friendship between you two fire demony people..." Yusuke said, grinning.

"Like what do you have in mind?" Hiei snapped. Shadow flew back down the road cheering. Another motorcyclist went flying after her. Neither Hiei nor Yusuke noticed.

"Like maybe you have robbed the poor girl of her virginity," Yusuke said, faking sadness and shaking his bowed head.

"I have not!" Hiei retorted.

"What makes _me_ so sure?"

"Ask _her_!"

"You could have just both opted to keep it secret," Yusuke said. "That is, until someday you go and get her _pregnant_, then you can't very well keep it a secret anymore."

"I'm not having any kids, and if I get her pregnant, she'll kill me and get an abortion or something."

"She wouldn't kill you! No more sex!"

"You're sick, Yusuke. You're really, really sick," Hiei said sadly, shaking his head. "Is that all you think about?"

"I'm a teenage boy. What do you expect?" Yusuke asked. Hiei sighed.

"Not much."

Shadow flew up the road and stopped just short of slamming into the blue convertible. Eclipse had a horrified look on her face, practically clawing her eyes out, but Shadow managed to stop before she hit it, with about an inch of leeway! Wow! What skill! (or not)

"Who's car is this?" Shadow asked, pulling off her helmet and pointing.

"MINE, DAMMIT! AND YOU ALMOST CRASHED INTO IT!" Eclipse screamed. She had big lines down her face from her practically-clawing-her-eyes-out fingernails. Shadow just stared.

"Since when could you drive legally?!"

"Since about the eighth, when I turned sixteen and went to the driver testing placey thing!" Eclipse snapped.

"Sweet! You never told me you were sixteen! It's the fourteenth! Why didn't you tell me? I love this car, by the way. Where'd you get the money to buy it?"

"I got the money from a random plot hole... Yeah, a plot hole, called 'my family,' who've saved money for this since they took me into their care. And also they're kinda semi-rich so they had no problem affording it... And I didn't tell you because My Uncle Or Someone was teaching me how to drive, and had me reading all these stupid road rule books and taking tests and stuff! Jeez! Isn't school enough? On the rare occasion that I go...?"

"You could've called."

"Well exCUSE me, but I was grounded off the phone, and also grounded to have an adult escort everywhere, so I couldn't leave my house except when My Uncle Or Someone was teaching me to drive! And also on my birthday when I got a whole crapload of video game stuff and didn't WANT to leave."

"Oh! Okay! Well, Kurama, Hiei, let's go! Driver's test time!" Shadow said cheerfully, pretty much having no clue what Eclipse had just said and not really caring a whole lot, either.

"You know you have to drive a _car_ in that test, right?" Kurama said.

"I know. I'm driving yours!"

Kurama groaned. "No arguing, I suppose?"

"How much damage could I do? It's a closed course!"

"I did a lot of damage," Yusuke said. "Why do you think I don't have a license yet?!"

"Because you're a bakayarou!" Shadow snapped. "You're not supposed to tell them you blew up half the course when I'm trying to convince Kurama to let me use his nice car!"

"Do you even know how to operate a car?" Kurama asked.

"YES! I can drive, baka fox!"

Kurama unhitched the trailed. "Prove it."

"WOOHOO!" Shadow skipped over to the car, leaving her helmet on her motorcycle, and got in the driver's seat. Kurama got in next to her on the passenger side and watched her every move as she indeed proved she could drive just peachy keen.

"Well then... We've only got the small problem left of what the heck we're going to do about your birth certificate and stuff..."

"TO KOENMA!" Shadow said, pointing down the road. She stood there for a moment, looking dead serious, before grinning like a child and skipping over to her motorcycle, hopping on, and shooting down the road.

"SHADOW! YOU CAN'T DRIVE WITHOUT A LICENSE!" Kurama shouted after her. "AND PUT ON YOUR DAMN HELMET!"

"She can't hear you and she doesn't care," Hiei said dryly. "I shouldn't have given her the key until she'd got her license... This can only lead to trouble..."

"Let's go, then," Yusuke said. He got into the back seat of Kurama's car. They stared at him cluelessly. He opened the door. "FOX, GET IN HERE AND DRIVE BEFORE I DO!"

Kurama yelped and was instantly in the driver's seat. "Okay, well I suppose we'd better follow her. Everyone in the car."

Eclipse jumped into her car and started it. "Woohoo!"

Hiei stared in horror at the girl, then quickly kicked Kuwabara out of the passenger seat of Kurama's car.

"Hey! I wanna sit there! You're too small!"

"Shut up, baka, and get in the back seat or we'll leave you behind," Hiei snapped.

"She does know that she can't reach Reikai with a motorcycle, right?" Kurama said.

"She'll find a way," Yusuke sighed. "Step on it, fox."

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

**Hmm... Okay, let's see, the 8th and 14th are the days of mine and Eclipse's birthdays, so those weren't random numbers... Neither of ours are in April, though.**

**Don't give me suggestions for this story. It's already done. I just didn't post it as I wrote it because I wanted to finish the Inuyasha crossover first...**


	2. Black Magic, Witchcraft, and Devil Worsh...

**(10-15-04) I could either make excuses for why I didn't have this up the day after chapter one, or I could get on with review responses and the story. You don't care for my excuses? That's what I thought. Cuz I could list so many that it'd be as long as the chapter itself. THANK YOU FOR THE REVIEWS! Twenty on chapter one!  
Hedi Dracona-** Yes, to put it mildly... "Oh my" works well...  
**Draikitha-** Nah, no Kurama/Eclipse romance cuz Eclipse is my best friend's character and I have a feeling if I had her in there making out with Kurama, she'd hurt me... The word 'romance' is actually spoken many times in this chapter in relation to the two fire demons and what they're doing... Don't ask. Just read.  
**xkuroxshinobix-** Yes, Shadow _was_ fifteen. Before she turned sixteen. Did you ever read my first story? She's fourteen then. Therefore, two years after, **dat** makes her sixteen. I know my stories...  
**Dark-Shadow-Goddess89-** Cool. Thanks. Yay. :falls asleep:  
**Zephyr Minamino-** Yes, well Shadow could have driven without parental permission anyway since her parents went poof... She thinks they faked their death... You can think whatever you want. And I wouldn't know anything about being sixteen cuz I'm 14...  
**LivingImpared-** You frighten me slightly. :makes little space between her finger and thumb and looks through it: Just slightly.  
**UnicornGirl-DragonLady-** Yes, perhaps in about forty years Shadow will have some control over that rock...  
**Silver Moon Assassin Crystal-** STOP THREATENING YOUKO! You hurt Youko, and I'm gonna send angry weasels after you to avenge him... I'm sure he'll appreciate that.  
**Okami Youkai-** I have a feeling that if I had any idea what you said, I'd feel a lot more accomplished in life... Yes? No? Maybe?  
**Carri-** I've actually thought of doing a Halloween fic but I already started another one, and once I'm done or nearly done with that one, I have another one I have to write, and I'm sure by the end or halfway through that one, I'll be starting on this other idea I had... :sigh: Oh dear... The ideas just keep coming...  
**Risika Karew-** Well, like I said, I could make excuses, or you could just be grateful I posted this chapter when I did. BE GRATEFUL, CUZ I DON'T FEEL LIKE WRITING ALL MY EXCUSES! ...IT WAS THE LOCUSTS!  
**HanyouToni-** Poor Hiei... Run for your life!  
**C.C.C.-** That's amazing... Shadow's like... Yeah... She's nuts. She's happy and cheerful and psychoticly morbidly evil all at the same time, and poor Hiei's... Not. And people think they make a good couple.  
**kiinu-** I randomly start laughing for absolutely no reason whatsoever, so how do you think my mother feels? I'll just be sitting there staring off into space and just burst out laughing... For NO reason apparent to ANYONE... Not even me, usually.  
**Water-Rose-** Yes. Shadow and Eclipse are just world domination waiting to happen. They could have the most powerful person in the universe cowering before them... Muwahahaha...  
**Mari Youma-** Yeah, it's October... Magical... Dunno why I picked April for their birthdays. :shrug: No apparent reason, really... If there was a reason, I forgot it.  
**purplepizzaeatnmonkey-** Evil moments are good, don't worry... I like your name for some odd reason.  
**Saeble-** What? I dunno. Potato! Yay! Nevermind. O.O  
**Shessha's Crazy-** I had an opportunity to ride a motorcycle but I didn't want to ride WITH somebody, so now I'm probly never going to be able to cuz he wrecked and he's not getting another one... And if I ever said I wanted to get a motorcycle, my mother would beat the life out of me... Then I'd have been better off getting the thing and wrecking it...

**CHAPTER TWO  
**Black magic, witchcraft, and devil worshipping

"Pull over to the side of the road!"

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Shadow glanced over her shoulder at the cops that had just come up behind her, sirens screaming. "Speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down, what should I do, what should I do?!?!?!?!"

"What should she do?" Hiei asked Kurama. Kurama debated for a second before he sighed.

"Well, she has no license so... Speed up."

"SPEED UP!" Yusuke screamed out the window. Kurama winced.

"Bakayarou! Now we're... Oh, you stupid..." He spun his car around and went the opposite direction, taking a turn off the main road onto some back country road and zoomed down it in the direction he assumed Shadow would head in.

"Speeding up," Shadow muttered to herself. She sunk low on the bike and shot down the road. "EAT MY DUST, SUCKERS!"

She easily lost them, and ended up at Kurama's predicted coordinates... Namely, the large parking lot behind an abandoned warehouse in a forest, rather hidden from everyone and everything.

"Hey! How'd you know I'd come here?!"

"Because this is where everybody goes when they're running from cops," Kurama said dryly.

"How would YOU know?" Hiei asked.

"I've ridden with Yusuke before."

"And how'd you know I knew about it?" Shadow asked.

"Because you seem to know everything about this city, oddly, even though it seems you never leave your house..."

"I know all... Through the use of black magic and witchcraft... And also with some help from maps, gangs, criminals I house in the basement, and Norman, the blue weasel."

A blue weasel hopped out of nowhere up onto Shadow's shoulder. It was wearing a weasel-sized white T-shirt and sunglasses. Everyone stared.

"Where did you get a blue weasel, Shadow?" Hiei asked. "And why was I not made aware of its pre-- Wait, what criminals are you keeping in the basement?!"

"This is Norman, everybody! He is the supreme weasel minion, because he is blue and wears a shirt," Shadow said proudly, grinning.

"Shadow, would you listen to me? What criminals?!"

"Why is it blue?" Yusuke asked curiously.

"BLUE!" Eclipse screeched, lunging. Shadow dodged and Eclipse went tumbling across the pavement.

"He's blue because he's _Norman_, the Supreme Weasel Minion of Uncontrollable Amounts of Rabid Man-Eating Weaselly Doom."

Everybody stared until they heard sirens in the distance.

"Shadow, do something with that... that... weasel... We've got to get to Reikai to officialize your existence so you can get a license and end up having it taken away anyhow because of your horrid skills at driving," Kurama said. He got back in his car, everybody piled in after him, Norman the weasel vanished off into the weaselly depths of the direction of Shadow's house, and Shadow jumped on her motorcycle.

"Oh yeah, and wear your helmet!" Hiei snapped, flinging Shadow's helmet out the window at her. It hit her in the head and she fell over. They all stared.

"Good one, Hiei," Yusuke said finally.

"Shut up, baka," Hiei snapped.

"Yes sir."

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

A psycho on a motorcycle went flying down the halls of Koenma's castle in Reikai. Who knows how it's possible, but she was. Four spirit detectives and the psycho's best friend were tearing through halls a few feet behind her.

"Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-hoooooooo!"

Koenma came out of his office to see what the ruckus was, and he was promptly run over. Shadow looked back at the thing that had ker-thumped under her tire, saw Yusuke and Kuwabara kneeling beside a tire tread marked Koenma while Hiei and Kurama stared with sweatdrops at Shadow. They suddenly looked surprised and Shadow's brain made the connection as to why when half a second later she slammed into a wall. Her brain didn't make the connection, of course, until she'd been lying on the ground for five minutes.

"Ow! I just ran into a wall!" she said. Cue anime face fault...

Of course, five minutes is plenty of time for Hiei and Kurama to have explained what the heck she was doing in Reikai with a motorcycle.

"I don't think I should help. I think I should get her thrown in prison," Koenma snapped. "Look! She just RUINED my outfit!"

"Boohoo," Hiei said. "So anyhow, if you don't make it possible for her to get her license, she'll drive without one, get arrested, thrown in prison, go psycho and burn the place down which will be diagnosed as abnormally powerful pyrokinesis, they will capture her, throw her in a loony bin, strap her to a table with all these weird wires on her head, and when they take a blood sample and realize she doesn't have normal human DNA, they'll think she's an alien, send her to the whoever-rules-this-country, and you will, in the end, regret not having granted her official ningenkai existence when you have to send your entire tantei into the government offices to rescue this drugged-up alien demon girl who could have avoided the entire situation completely had you just done one simple thing. See?"

Koenma stared. "Very interesting, Hiei. You're sounding more and more like Shadow each time I hear from you."

"You're imagining it," Hiei said in a cold monotone.

"I don't think I am."

Meanwhile, Shadow was revving up her motorcycle.

"DON'T YOU DARE DRIVE THAT THING IN HERE ANYMORE!" Koenma shouted. Shadow went flying backwards through the hole she'd put in the wall a few minutes previous.

"Well?" Kurama prompted. "Will you?"

"If she ends up getting it taken away or getting arrested, I'll see to it that she never gets it back," Koenma said finally.

"Hear that Shadow?" Yusuke said. "You have to obey LAWS! And in order to that, you have to know what they ARE! So COME WITH ME!" He grabbed her wrist and dragged her away from her motorcycle.

"Well he's sure gung-ho about it," Kuwabara muttered.

"He didn't pass his driver's test. He wants to see if Shadow will," Kurama said.

Shadow, meanwhile, was whining like a baby.

"But I KNOW all the laws! When you hear sirens, speed up; if you see a stop sign, make sure everybody else stops dead when you shoot in front of them; hills are fun to go down faster than everybody else, speed limits are only for vehicles with at least four wheels, bicyclers don't appreciate having mud splattered on them but it may overpower their B.O., trains can't stop very fast so you have to go especially fast to get ahead of them, driving at night is fun because there's more small furry critters to flatten and there's a higher chance of seeing people making out in the park, or perhaps even doing more than that, and you can splash mud on them or throw what's left of your McDonalds burger at them! THE LAWS ARE SIMPLE!"

Everybody had stopped and stared at her about the time she got to the speed limit rule.

"On the other hand..." Koenma said eventually.

"She's kidding!" Kurama and Hiei said in unison.

"Yes, you know her, she's retarded!"

"If she doesn't pass her test than we'll sell the motorcycle. I could use the money for something more productive anyway."

"NO! YOU SHALL NOT SELL THE LORD AND MASTER OF MOTORCYCLES!" Shadow screeched, clawing wildly as Yusuke restrained her.

"Come on, stupid, you've got to study for your driver's test! Your appointment is at noon tomorrow, so you've got under 20 hours," Yusuke told her. "Twenty hours to learn an encyclopedia-sized book of rules."

"I NEED NOT LEARN!" Shadow said, pulling away. "I KNOW ALL!"

Eclipse walked down the hall singing quietly and conducting an unseen band with her index fingers. "...Try not to shove a roll of duct tape up your nose while taking your driver's test..." (A/N: That's a line from Weird Al Yankovic's song "Your Horoscope for Today." Very funny.)

Shadow blinked, watching her walk away and trip over an unseen particle of dust ten feet down the hall. "If I get my license, can I be as stupid as Eclipse?"

"You already ARE as stupid, if not stupider, than Eclipse," Yusuke said. "That's why I'm sure you'll horribly fail your driver's test and be quite unable to show me up."

"But Eclipse _passed_ her driver's test," Kurama reminded him.

"Shutup, fox!"

"Well it's just the truth..."

Shadow, meanwhile, was singing, completely oblivious to anything that happened in the past twenty minutes. "_Kaze ga hashiru ore o yobu mugon no hariken. Are wa sain kessen no aizu darou... Sou kono inochi yori a omoi yume o. Kanaeru tame no hi ga kita saa... Kokoro no mama ni tada fighting to dream..._"

Hiei and Kurama instantly snapped their heads around and stared at her.

"Why does she always victimize _us_?" Kurama asked.

"It's usually just _me_, what with her fondness of _rapping_ my Tasogare song..."

"That's terrible. We pity you," Koenma said sarcastically. "Now, I suppose I'd better get started on that stuff... You know my father gets furious when I do these little unnecessary favors for you guys..."

"Why? We've saved the world on _countless occasions_!" Yusuke said, exasperated. "Your father's just messed up."

"Go away, Yusuke, and take Shadow with you. If she flunks this driver's test thing, I'll be outraged."

"She won't," Kurama said confidently. They proceeded in removing Shadow from Reikai only when Hiei let her ride the motorcycle out.

They arrived home shortly afterwards. No more cops. No more death, doom, and danger. It was all peaceful in Tokyo...

Shadow shot up into her yard and stopped her motorcycle around the back of the house. Kurama and Eclipse pulled up to the curb and everyone piled out of their cars.

"Tell me, Eclipse, how was it you managed to pass your driver's test?" Yusuke asked sickly, having decided to ride with her.

"MAGICALLY!" Eclipse said. Shadow threw a rock at her head.

"_THAT'S MY MAGICAL ANSWER FOR ALL UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS! THINK OF YOUR OWN!_"

"**DEVIL WORSHIPPING!**" Eclipse cheered. Everybody blinked.

"Indeed," Kurama said dryly. He wandered over to Hiei and dragged him off to the side. Yusuke's attention was drawn to this more than Shadow and Eclipse arguing over worshipping the devil. Shadow said she met the devil and he's not partial to being worshipped, and Eclipse says fine then, I'll steal your magic, and they proceeded to strangle each other. So, Yusuke strolled on over to where Kurama was talking to Hiei.

"Weren't you going to take her to dinner?" Kurama was saying.

"No... That was your idea, and I'm not about to risk taking that lunatic out in public," Hiei said, casting a glance at the two girls rolling around in the dirt.

"It's her sixteenth birthday, Hiei! It's special."

"You're nuts."

"What? You're the closest thing she has to a boyfriend--"

"I'm not her boyfriend."

"Whatever. So anyway, I'm sure she'd appreciate it loads if you took her _out_ to dinner. Somewhere nice."

"_Kurama_," Hiei groaned. "I don't want to."

"Why not?!"

"Because!"

"That's a second-grader's answer, Hiei," Kurama said patiently. "If you don't have a good reason, you're going."

"Why are you trying to send me and Shadow off on some kind of date, anyway? Is it really that important?"

"Hiei, you're being childish."

"I am not!"

"How about we make it a double date, then?" Yusuke suggested.

"I'M NOT DATING ANYBODY!" Hiei shouted. "Hey, what the hell are you doing listening in?!"

"I was standing right here the entire time. And don't say you aren't dating anybody, from that kiss earlier there's no way you can deny it."

"I'M DENYING IT! Are you going to _stop me?_" Hiei threatened.

"No, I won't stop you from denying it, _but_ I know it's true, so it doesn't matter how much you whine about it."

"It isn't true!!!" Hiei complained.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Yusuke pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and was about to dial a number. He looked up at Hiei. "Last chance or you're going on a double date with me and Keiko."

"What?!" Hiei yelped. "So it's either I go with Shadow or I go with Shadow, Keiko, and _you_?"

"Yep! Unless you wanna make it a whole big ol' mob and have Kurama bring along Eclipse as a kind of late birthday date thing. Then Kuwabara would be the only one left out!"

"But... I'm not dating Eclipse..." Kurama said. Yusuke dragged him off.

"We're trying to get Hiei to go with Shadow, it doesn't matter if you're going out with Eclipse!"

"But..."

"Whatcha whisperin' about?!" Shadow said cheerfully, seemingly popping up out of the ground beside them. Both of them jumped back.

"What the...! My god, don't _do_ that!" Yusuke said, his hand on his chest. Kurama just looked at Shadow with a thoughtful look.

"How's this, Hiei?" he said, pulling Shadow over to Hiei by her hand. "_I'll_ take Shadow out to dinner."

"What?!" Hiei yelped. "You guys are evil!"

"Is that a yes, you'll take her alone, or a yes, you'll go on a double date?" Yusuke asked.

"What?! It's not a yes anything!" the little fire demon said.

"I'm confused," Shadow said randomly. She was, as usual, ignored, as Kurama and Yusuke were too busy making poor little Hiei feel cornered.

"But... but... but..." Hiei was sputtering. Kurama and Yusuke had confidently evil smiles on their faces. The little demon sighed. "Fine."

"...Fiiinee...?" Yusuke said, urging him to continue. Hiei squirmed, still thinking.

"Yes, do continue," Kurama said, smiling. Shadow was totally confused, so she just stood there, her hand still in Kurama's from when he'd dragged her over to Hiei. Hiei sighed again and removed her hand from Kurama's and led her back into the house, not exactly answering their question. The boys stared at the door for a minute before Eclipse came dancing over.

"What was all that about?" she asked.

"Yeah, really," Kuwabara said, walking up to them. Yusuke grabbed Kurama's shoulders.

"You tell them," he said. Then he jogged towards Shadow's house.

"Yu-- Never mind," Kurama said as the boy went inside.

"So _what_ was all that?" Kuwabara asked.

"Persuading Hiei to take Shadow out to dinner," Kurama said.

"Did he agree?"

"I don't know, he said fine, then he went inside."

"Oh. Well then I think we'd better go in there and--"

"AHHHHHH!" Yusuke came flying out the door and slammed into the porch, slid off, and rolled down the stairs into the yard. Kurama stared, then walked over with Eclipse and Kuwabara behind him. He looked down at Yusuke's twitching body.

"What'd you do?" he asked.

"I, er, they were having a, uh, discussion," Yusuke said, his eyes looking this way and that as he spoke.

"Did you walk in on them making out?" Kuwabara asked. "Cuz it's about time somebody other than me did!"

"No," Yusuke said, getting up. "I told you, they were having a discussion. Then Hiei tossed me out the door."

"What exactly were they discussing?!" Kurama asked, skeptical that anything Shadow spoke of with Hiei would be deserving of throwing Yusuke out on his ear.

"I _don't_ know..." Yusuke said.

"Well then why'd Hiei toss you out the door?!"

"I dunno."

"You're useless."

"I think he walked in on them making out," Kuwabara said, sounding sure of himself.

"Hiei won't be needing us to go with him, by the way," Yusuke said.

"How are you knowing this?" Kurama asked. The boy pointed. Hiei and Shadow walked out onto the porch in slightly nicer-than-normal clothes. Eclipse blinked, then burst out laughing.

"YOU'RE GOING ON A DATE WITH HIEI! HAHAHAHAHA! That's so unlike you it's the most funniest thing that has ever happened to me!"

"It's their fault," Hiei snapped, pointing at Yusuke and Kurama. They instantly got halos. "Stupid obsessive people wouldn't leave me alone..."

"It's not a _bad_ thing Hiei!" Yusuke taunted. "Think of it as bonding time!"

"I have all the friggin' bonding time I _WANT_! I _LIVE_ with the girl, for crying out loud!"

"Good point," Yusuke said, nodding.

"Well, I'll drive you, then," Kurama said. "I made reservations. You'll be late."

"You did WHAT?" Hiei shouted. "You mean you made reservations without even knowing if I'd agree to go with her?! You're THAT sure of yourself?!"

"Yup," Kurama said. "Get in the car."

Hiei stood there sputtering and fuming. "I can't believe you'd do that."

"I did. Get in the car, you'll be late."

Hiei sulked across the yard and the first noise he heard from either Yusuke or Kuwabara, he flung a rock at Kuwabara. As it had been Yusuke laughing, he just laughed even harder and got a dirt clod thrown into his big mouth. He sat there spluttering and spitting until Hiei and Shadow were both in the back seat of Kurama's car.

"I can't believe you did that," Hiei grumbled. "Why would you make reservations when you don't even know we'll be going?"

"I knew you'd go, Hiei," Kurama said.

"No you didn't," the little demon pouted.

"So where exactly are you taking us, Kurama?" Shadow asked.

"You'll see."

"You're downright evil, fox," Hiei said.

"I know. But I feel kinda like a limo driver, minus the limo," Kurama said, grinning.

It wasn't long before he pulled up outside a restaurant. Hiei looked at it, then looked at Kurama, then at Shadow, then back at Kurama.

"You are NUTS, Kurama. What is WRONG with you?!"

"Lots. Go inside."

Hiei sighed and opened the door, climbing out and waiting for Shadow to get out the same side. Then he leaned down to talk to Kurama in the passenger's window.

"Are we walking home afterwards?"

"Nope. I'll be here around nine."

"Nine?!"

"Well, you can eat, then go off someplace and do whatever else you might feel like doing, but be back here by nine."

"You planned this all out, didn't you?!" Hiei said.

"With some help from Yusuke. By the way, what was it you threw him out the door for?"

"Walking into Shadow's room when she was changing."

Kurama's eyes widened slightly. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"Well... See you at nine, then," Kurama said.

"Ja mata, baka." Hiei stepped away from the car and went back to where Shadow was standing. They walked into the restaurant and Kurama waited a minute before driving away.

When he arrived back at Shadow's house, he was lunged on by Yusuke.

"Well?!"

"Well what? They got out of the car and walked into the building," Kurama said dryly, then he changed his tone to accusing. "You walked in on Shadow when she was changing?!"

"What?! Who told you that?!" Yusuke said nervously.

"Hiei."

"I didn't mean to."

"Ah."

"But what about, like, I mean, did they seem suspicious?"

"Hiei did."

"Did you tell them you'd get them at nine?"

"Yes."

"And they weren't suspicious about that?"

"Yes, they were."

"I can't wait until they get back... What do you want to bet they'll sleep together?"

"They've slept together _before_, Yusuke."

"I mean, like, well, you know what I mean!"

"You're _sick_!"

"What?! You can't say you never thought of it, fox!"

"Thought of what?"

"HI EVERYONE!" Eclipse squealed, popping up out of the ground. They jumped.

"WHY DOES EVERYBODY DO THAT?!"

"It's not everybody. Last time I checked, only I do."

"No, Shadow does too."

"What?! Well! That thieving child!" Eclipse said angrily. She stomped off, got in her car, and drove away.

"Where's _she_ going?"

"Beats me."

"Hey guys!!!" Kuwabara came running out onto the porch. "Where does Shadow keep her lifetime supply of money? I need to pay Youko back for last time I lost poker to him! Quick, while they aren't home!"

Kurama slowly fell over and landed on the ground with a thud. Yusuke and Kuwabara looked down at him.

"Hey, uh, is he okay...?"

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

Hiei glanced around and sighed.

"There are no shadowy corners in romantic places..."

"Yes there is, but if you go in them, you're automatically assumed to be making out."

"Adults have more dignity than to make out in public," Hiei said.

"I'm not an adult, now am I?" She grinned.

"I still can't believe Kurama did this. Stupid fox must have spent a lot of money on this. You'd better appreciate it."

"I appreciate it, I suppose," Shadow said. Hiei snorted.

They got their table and ordered their meal, and Shadow sat there glancing around until the food came.

"I feel really out of place here," she said.

"Then eat and we'll leave."

"But Kurama's not coming until nine o'clock. It's like, seven thirty."

"I dunno. If all else fails, we walk home," Hiei said, shrugging. "It's not as if we'll get mugged or anything."

"True."

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

"Raise, call, or fold, Eclipse."

"Fold."

"Okay, let's see it, fox!"

Kurama laid out a straight flush on the table. Yusuke looked at his cards and glared, then flung down two pairs.

"You're cheating again, aren't you?!"

"Nope. That's Youko that cheats."

"So?! He could be whispering to you in the back of your head!"

"He isn't. Not about poker, at least."

Yusuke blinked. "Well what _else_ would he be whispering about?"

"Stuff," Kurama answered casually. Yusuke sighed.

"You're informative today, aren't you?"

"Yes, quite," the redhead replied.

"I'm hungry," Eclipse said. "I'm gonna raid Shadow's fridge."

"Bring me something," Yusuke said. "See if there's anything in there that isn't alive."

Eclipse (who'd apparently returned from her random 'drive away muttering' earlier) strolled into the kitchen and opened the fridge door. She poked around for a bit before coming back and tossing something wrapped in aluminum foil onto the table in front of Yusuke.

"What is it?"

"Shadow's specialty. Mystery meat."

"Yuck! I'm not eating that! It could be a stir-fried weasel!"

"Be sensible, Yusuke! She wouldn't kill her weasels! They're useful," Kurama said, raising the bets up a good bit. "If the salesman pickings are slim, she feeds them the odd things she didn't remember ever putting in the fridge."

"Oh yeah, forgot about that."

"By the way, you'd better fold while you have the chance," Kurama advised.

"Nope! Cheaters never win!"

Kurama blinked and looked at the heaping pile of poker chips on his corner of the table. "My chips say otherwise."

"Shut up, cheater!"

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

"Have a nice night!"

Shadow and Hiei finally escaped the over-romantic atmosphere of the restaurant. They stood there for a second.

"What time is it?" Hiei asked.

"Uh... Two after eight," Shadow said, looking at her wristwatch.

"An hour... We have an hour in which to do whatever you want."

"Whatever _I_ want?"

"It's your birthday, isn't it?"

"Well about all I feel like doing right now is sleeping, but I don't wanna."

"Huh?"

"Well I don't wanna go home, cuz then there'll be Yusuke and Kuwabara bothering us," Shadow said. "Besides, it's kinda nice being out with you."

Hiei looked at her. "I can say the same about you."

"Really?"

"Well _duh_, Shadow."

Shadow grinned. "So, where shall we head off to?"

"Hm... C'mon." Hiei headed down the street and Shadow followed.

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

"I'm so freaking bored. What time is it?"

"Quarter after eight."

"Can't you just go pick them up early?"

"No, Yusuke."

"Why _not_?"

"Because I told them nine o'clock, I'm sure they're done eating by now and are probably sitting under some tree in the park... _talking_."

"But muggers go through the parks at night preying on happy couples!"

"Do you honestly think Hiei and Shadow would be suitable prey for a mugger?"

"...Good point. I'm going for a walk."

"What the...?"

But Yusuke was already out the door.

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

The fire demons were sitting on the shore of a pond at the edge of the city park. They'd already walked all the way around it, apparently the best version of a moonlit walk on the beach they could get without a beach.****

"Y'know, if you want to be, you're a very romantic person, Hiei."

"What do you know about romance, Shadow? You're only sixteen."

"I know all, remember?" She paused. "Besides, I watch a lot of TV."

Hiei chuckled. "If that's the only experience you've had with romance, you're deprived."

"What do _you_ know about romance, Mister Heartless?" Shadow asked, jabbing him in the chest. Hiei got a slightly startled look on his face, only just then realizing what he'd actually said. Then he smiled.

"More than you'd expect." He pulled her close and kissed her.

(A/N: I can't believe I'm writing this... ::sigh::)

Hiei leaned back slightly, breaking the kiss. Shadow stared into his eyes for a second before she leaned on him, putting her head on his shoulder.

"This has been a very good first birthday," she said quietly.

"I'm glad."

"You know if we tell Yusuke about any of this we'll never hear the end of it."

"Then we just won't tell him."

Shadow smiled. "Brilliant solution, Hiei."

They sat there in silence for a while.

"This is like a moonlit beach scene, except those typically end up with two people rolling around in the sand making out," Shadow said randomly.

"There's no sand here," Hiei said plainly.

"I'd noticed. I wouldn't want to roll around in the sand anyway, cuz then I'd be all covered in sand and that's uncomfortable."

Hiei chuckled slightly again. "Are you saying you'd want to make out with me, though?"

"I guess I never said I wouldn't. But I never said I would, either."

"No, you didn't."

Shadow sat up, then pushed Hiei onto his back on the ground and kissed him.

Unbeknownst to either of them, Yusuke had decided the most likely place to find them would be the park.

And at the precise second, he found them.

How very typical. Yet he didn't interrupt. He just stood there watching giddily, suppressing childish giggles at proof that his plot had been successful. When Shadow an Hiei broke off for breath and didn't go back to kissing, he silently slunk back to Shadow's house just as Kurama was getting in his car to go pick them up.

"Hey, Kurama, I don't think they're quite ready to come home," he said through the window as the redhead put the key in the ignition.

"Why's that?"

"I just came from the park."

Kurama blinked. "Are they making out under a tree?"

"Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"Well, they were making out in the park by that pond, y'know...?"

"I see. I'm gonna go pick them up now," Kurama said flatly, starting up the car.

"Can I come?"

"No, Yusuke, you can stay here."

"Why?"

"Because. You'll end up slipping up and mentioning you saw them."

"I will not!"

"Better not risk it. Besides, if you're there, they won't act natural."

"Like they will around you?!"

"Yes, they will, because I won't mention it in order to embarrass them later, as you would. I'll be back shortly."

Yusuke had to jump back as Kurama started away from the curb while he was still leaning on the car.

When Kurama arrived at the designated meeting spot, Hiei and Shadow were just jogging up the street. They didn't get in the car instantly and Kurama shortly realized why. Shadow was soaking wet.

"What exactly _were_ you two doing?" he asked, eyeing up Shadow then looking to Hiei for an answer.

"Y'know the pond in the park?" Hiei asked.

"Yes," Kurama said, already putting it together.

"She fell in."

"You pushed me!" Shadow accused.

"I did _not_. You fell."

"Yeah, 'cause you pushed me..." Shadow grumbled. Hiei looked at her.

"Those are some of Shadow's more formal, expensive clothes and you pushed her into a dirty pond in them?" the fox asked.

"She FELL!" Hiei said.

"He pushed me."

"Get in the car," Kurama said finally, exasperated.

"But your seats..." Shadow started.

"Who cares. They'll dry. Unless you'd rather walk home?"

Shadow and Hiei exchanged glances, shrugged, and got in.

"So did you have fun? Up to the point where you were ended up sopping wet?" Kurama asked.

"Yeah," they said in unison, grinning. Green eyes focused on their reflection in his rearview mirror as he pulled into the street.

"Glad to hear it... I assume you don't regret me forcing you into it, then?"

"Hmm... Not really," Hiei said.

"Not really?"

"I just don't like that you forced me into something that wasn't my idea in the first place. The rest was okay."

"I see."

"Do you really?" Shadow said mockingly (is that a word?).

"Yes, Shadow, I do."

"How very interesting."

"Kurama," Hiei said, question in his tone.

"Yes?"

"What does Yusuke expect when we get home? I won't tell him what you say."

The redhead couldn't help but smile. "I think he expects you to be all over each other, and probably have mad passionate sex tonight, and tomorrow Shadow will come out with your love mark on her neck."

Hiei snorted. "We go out to dinner and he thinks we suddenly fall head-over-heels for each other?"

"Well it was one of the most romantic restaurants in Tokyo..."

"Pssh. Remind me never to go back."

"Why?"

"It's scary. Some of those couples in there I half expected to start making out, or do worse, in the middle of the dance floor..."

"That's sick, Hiei..."

"What? Shadow saw them!"

"Yeah, Kurama, they were all over each other. It was repulsing."

Kurama chuckled. "Did you two dance?"

"_No_," the fire demons said.

"_Duh_, fox," Shadow said. "I may dance all the time at home, but I'm not about to go out in public with this short little guy and act all mushy..."

"Hey!" Hiei said. "I'm not all that much shorter than you."

"Sorry. Would you rather I'd called you a handsome stud or something?"

"Er..."

"See?"

Kurama pulled up outside Shadow's house. They all got out of the car and went back inside. Yusuke and Kuwabara regarded the fire demons with expectant, confused looks.

Hiei didn't seem to notice for a minute, then he looked at them closer. "You guys look like you're a couple of buzzards waiting for something to die..."

"Not quite..."

Kurama just smiled and walked upstairs to his room.

"I need to change," Shadow said. She glared at Yusuke. "And no walking in on me this time!"

Kuwabara gave Yusuke a horrified look. "THAT'S why you came flying out the door?!"

The other boy just chuckled nervously. Shadow went upstairs.

"So did you enjoy your date?" Yusuke asked once she was gone.

"Refrain from calling it a date, please," Hiei said.

"But that's what it was..."

"No it wasn't."

"Whatever it was, did you have fun?"

"I guess so."

"You guess so?! What's that supposed to mean? Did you dance? Did you kiss?"

"No."

"What?!" Yusuke said. "That's a lie, I know you had to have at least kissed!"

"No we didn't. How would you know?"

"Um, my, uh, ESP! That's it!"

Hiei looked at Yusuke suspiciously and went upstairs.

"Hey Kurama!"

The redhead's door opened. "Yeah?"

"Yusuke didn't happen to go for a walk between eight and nine, did he?"

"As a matter of fact--"

Yusuke came flying down the hall and covered up Kurama's mouth. "No!" Kurama pushed his hand away.

"Yes he did," he said quickly. Yusuke gave him a meaningful look. It was a 'shut up, Kurama! He's not supposed to know!' look.

"And I think he went through the p--"

"No I didn't," Yusuke said, covering Kurama's mouth again.

"He didn't even finish his sentence," Hiei said, narrowing his eyes. Kurama grabbed Yusuke's wrist and held it away from his face.

"He went through the park and--" He caught Yusuke's other hand as he tried to cover up his mouth. Yusuke strained to stop the fox. "And he saw you and Shadow."

"KURAMA! SHUT UP!" Yusuke hollered.

"I'm just doing the friend thing," Kurama said, grinning.

"Well sometimes the friend thing isn't the right thing to do!"

Hiei looked thoughtful, then Shadow came walking down the hall in jeans and a t-shirt, her normal attire, and wrapped her arms around Hiei's waist from behind.

"Yes, I suppose there's no hiding it now, Hiei," she said dramatically.

"Huh...?" Yusuke said curiously.

"No, there's no way we can hide it anymore... You see... I'm pregnant," Shadow said.

Yusuke died on the spot. Shadow burst out laughing. She laughed until she collapsed and couldn't breathe.

"My God you're gullible," she said when she finally caught her breath about five minutes later.

"I HATE YOU!" Yusuke screamed, jumping up. "YOU MEAN YOU'RE LYING?"

"Yes I'm lying, stupid! In order for me to be pregnant I'd have had to have had sex at some point in the past nine months and I've never had sex in my life, _therefore_... I'm not," Shadow said, still grinning.

"I hate you... You mean there's nothing between you and Hiei?"

"Not that I know of..." Shadow said, looking at Hiei.

"No," he confirmed.

"You're so stupid!" Yusuke said. "You make like, a perfect couple! You're adorable together! You should be together!"

"I really don't like being described as adorable," Hiei said.

"But you are!" Yusuke said. Hiei looked at him, horrified. "THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT! I _meant_ that you and Shadow look cute together! She's so... un-you!"

"Un...me...?"

"Yes! She's all cheerful and stupid and clueless and you're like, not!"

"You sound absolutely retarded," Hiei said. "Just give up on getting us together. If we should ever fall madly in love with each other, you'll know. But she's only sixteen."

"SO?!"

"Forget it," Hiei said, walking down the hall. Shadow remained standing there with her hands clasped behind her back, grinning widely. Yusuke just looked from Hiei to Shadow, sputtered and gestured dumbly for a second, then narrowed his eyes, grumbled something, and sulked down the stairs.

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

**I scared the crap out of my best friend when she was reading this... Where Shadow said she was pregnant... Whenever Eclipse reads my stories, if I know something disturbing is coming up, I watch her face for a reaction since she rarely says anything while reading... She just got this indescribable look of horror and I burst out laughing... It was funny. I scared her. I think she believed it... Muwahahahaha...**


	3. Heir to the Throne of Cheese

**(10-18-04) Nothing to babble about here... So, on with responses.  
Pyschopathic Maniac Girl-** I assume you liked it... That really stretched my page out... Long... drawn out... Laughter...  
**HanyouToni-** Now that's something I'd like to see... Hiei in therapy.  
**Celebrindae-** Really? Cool.  
**xkuroxshinobix-** Yes, they made out... Scary... Glad you liked the chapter... I updated again, did you notice?  
**Draikitha-** Then I accomplished my goal... Lol, just kidding. :D Glad you liked it.  
**C.C.C.-** Yes, whatever happens happens... It is as the all-mighty authoress wishes it (that's me by the way).  
**Carri-** Well, I don't want your legion of undead minions added to the millions of other things that are stalking me, spying on me, trying to kill me, talking to me in my head, etc etc etc... So, I updated just because of that.. :yeahright xD:  
**Dark-Shadow-Goddess89-** Yes, God bless them for loving me... :strikes a pose: I've got quite an ego, haven't I? Teeheehee... At least I'm not some pansy with no self-esteem.  
**Saeble-** WHAT SITE HAS WR SONGS? I WANT THEM! NOW! :coughcough: Um... Please?  
**Flame34-** Beat you to it. I just didn't color it yet. :D  
**Zephyr Minamino-** Aw, nuts, I was gonna send you a picture I found of Hiei wearing a suit/tux/whatever kinda thingy... Remind me in an email or something if you wanna see it.  
**Okami Youkai-** I have absolutely no clue.  
**Kate Ryou-** Well I dunno if it'd be considered a secret in the first place...  
**Spatial Monkey-** What is it with monkies? Anyway... Yeah, I suppose I kinda can write mushy stuff, but it's not really fun... Unless you get some kind of odd thrill from writing about _other people_ loving each other and whatnot... I don't. And romance is not something I practice in life either. Love is evil. My mom got pissed when I said that...  
**Shessha's Crazy-** Yes, I agree too, unfortunately I have other things to do and cannot follow you in your dazed walk.  
**Water-Rose-** _Aliens?!?_ ALIENS IMPREGNATED SHADOW! :shrieks in horror and runs away:  
**kiinu-** Yeah... Information... Stored... Somewhere... I'll never find it again, but it's there. If somebody ever asks me about your history class, I'll... Not remember and so in effect they will get a clueless stare as answer.  
**kaida13-** Agree about what? I forget. Oh well. :wanders off and falls over a nearby cliff:  
**Hedi Dracona-** Yes, that's true enough.  
**Mari Youma-** Scaring people is lots of fun. It really scared people when they walk in the door and you go flying out of your seat and tackle them, screaming "SHINY!" and pulling at their many necklaces/earrings/chains...  
**hiei&kuramas gurl-** Um... I'll... consider it... But it's not likely... Read what I said to Spatial Monkey...  
**UnicornGirl-DragonLady-** Why would he do that? He only messes with Kuwabara's mind... And he does that often... And Shadow messes with anybody's mind who she feels inclined to.  
**purplepizzaeatnmonkey-** Yeah... Scary.

**CHAPTER THREE  
**Heir to the Throne of Cheese

"So, Shadow, I assume you studied hard last night for this test," Kurama said, grinning over at Shadow in the passenger's seat.

"Yep! I studied those books you gave me until I fell asleep five minutes after I walked into my room!"

"I figured," Kurama said. "I was being sarcastic."

"Oh."

"You had better pass this, you know," Hiei said from the back seat.

"I will! Norman used his weaselly skills to implant the information into my brain while I slept."

The guys sighed heavily.

"I'm serious!" she said. "I woke up this morning and knew everything I need to know!"

"Well that's what you said yesterday and you ended up listing off your laws of throwing McDonald's hamburgers at happy couples making out in the park and splashing mud on bicyclers..."

"Those are my laws. I meant that I know all _your_ laws."

"Okay then, Shadow, here's a simple question: What does a yield sign mean?"

"It means ya yield for the people who were there first!"

"Something like that..." Kurama muttered. "Do pedestrians have the right of way?"

"Yes, I think so, but if there's some old lady hobblin' out into the street in front of me, I'm going around her! I'm not gonna sit around for ten minutes waiting for the old bat to end up needing somebody to carry her anyway! People like that shouldn't leave their houses!"

Kurama pulled into the driver's testing place, but before he got out of the car he made sure to lay down rules for Shadow.

"Do not mouth off to the tester. Do what they tell you, nothing more. When they let you drive my car in your test, wrecking it will not only fail you, it will infuriate me, and you don't want that."

"No sir."

"Just... Behave. Honestly, Shadow, if you fail this--"

"Okay, okay, I know what I'm doing," Shadow said, already getting out of the car. "Jeez. You underestimate me, fox."

"No I don't," Kurama said, getting out and falling in step with her and Hiei. "It's _my_ car we're dealing with here. I'm protective of my possessions."

"Same thing."

"And I know you. You aren't one to abide by the laws."

"I know all the laws, fox! Stop worrying!" Shadow said, sounding confident. Kurama sighed.

"Okay then..."

Hiei held open the door for Shadow, then, just to be mean, didn't hold it for Kurama. Instead he stuck his tongue out at the boy when the door nearly closed on him. Kurama said nothing and just gave him a look.

"Okay, sit," Kurama said, pointing at the only vacant chair in the lobby. Shadow plopped down and Kurama went to check her in... (I've never been to a driver's testy placey thingy cuz I'm only fourteen and have seen no need as of yet... So if this isn't how it works, I care not.)

Shadow looked at the girl next to her. The first word that popped into her head was "prep." I assume you can picture that.

"'Ello!" she said anyway.

"Hi," the girl replied. "You here to take your test?"

"Yep! And I'm gonna pass it, too."

"Don't be so sure. I failed the first time."

"Well I'm not you."

The girl shrugged. "True enough. I'm Akiko."

"I'm Shadow."

"That's an English word, isn't it?"

"...It's...my name..." Shadow said, leaving off the, 'you idiot' that she wanted so much to add but, for Kurama's sake and because she was working on social manners (also for Kurama's sake), didn't.

"I'm taking English in high school."

"I already know it all..."

"Really? Where'd you learn? I think it's the hardest thing in the world, but that's probably just because I'm an idiot."

"Most likely," Shadow muttered under her breath.

"What?"

"Oh! I said, uh, no you aren't! An idiot, I mean. It took me ages to learn! Yeah..."

"Oh. So do you have your own car?"

"No, I'm using my friend's."

"Me too. My boyfriend's car, of course. I've been living with him for a while."

"How exciting," Shadow said dryly.

"That's my boyfriend over there," Akiko said, pointing. The boy she'd indicated was in line in front of Kurama, talking to him. Hiei was standing there with his arms crossed, looking dark and evil and unhappy.

"Really?"

"Who's that girl he's talking to?" the girl said, more to herself than Shadow. Of course, Shadow fell right out of her chair and landed with a loud thud. Akiko looked at her curiously.

"Are you okay?"

"That's not a girl."

"Excuse me?"

"That redhead he's talking to is the friend of mine who was so kind as to lend me _his_ car to use in this test, and _he_'s most definitely **not** a girl," Shadow said.

"... Oh."

"Yeah, oh."

"Is he your, um, boyfriend then?"

"No. He's not. He's my friend. I've never had a boyfriend, exactly, but if you want to get technical, the little guy beside him is the closest thing I have."

"You've never had a boyfriend?!" Akiko said, amazed. She didn't wait for a response before looking closely at Hiei. "Whoa, he's a little hottie..."

"Yes, I suppose so," Shadow said dryly.

"You suppose so?! He's your boyfriend, isn't he?"

"Not really..."

"I'll take him, then! I'd even break up with my boyfriend for him!"

"Yeah right! He wouldn't like you anyhow," Shadow said.

"I bet he would. I had six boys all wanting to go out with me at one time!"

"Couldn't guess why they hell they'd do that..." Shadow muttered to herself. "Prep."

"What?"

"Let's see you try to even get him to notice you then," Shadow challenged. "Your boyfriend is distracted filling out those paper thingies, let's see you try."

"Fine!" Akiko got up and walked over to Hiei. Kurama had gone to an empty desk to talk to one of the people who worked there, so Hiei was pretty much just standing there looking slightly out of place. The girl walked up to him.

"Hey there," she said. Hiei looked up at her without moving his head.

"What?"

"I dunno. I just wanted to say hi."

"Really. You don't even know me." Hiei shot a look at Shadow. He'd seen her talking to this girl.

"Well, I could _get_ to know you," she said, smiling.

"No you couldn't," the little demon replied.

"What? Sure I could!"

"Uh, whatever." Hiei walked past her and over to Shadow. "What the hell are you doing, Shadow?"

"What? Nothing!"

"You were talking to that girl, then she came over and started talking to me. So what were you trying to do?"

"I said you wouldn't like her and she said she had six boys competing for her so of course you'd like her and I told her to try to get you to notice her and voila! She didn't!" Shadow said cheerfully.

"I see. Why would you have been discussing whether I'd like her or not?"

"Cuz... I said you aren't my boyfriend and she said that if I didn't want you, she'd take you. Because you're a 'little hottie' to quote her exactly."

Hiei paused. "I see." He sat down next to her. "Ready to go?"

"I'm gonna get my license, and then, we will all be happy. Shiny, happy. People."

"Will we really."

"Yes!"

Akiko had gone to stand next to her boyfriend, and they'd finished filling out the papers. She walked past Shadow and Hiei.

"Wish me luck," she said, smiling.

"Don't wreck," Shadow replied. Hiei said nothing and Akiko seemed disappointed by that. Then she went out the door.

"Buwahahaha..."

Hiei looked at Shadow sideways. "You okay?"

"NO!"

"Alrighty then." He got up and walked over to Kurama's side, leaving Shadow all by herself. She looked around, let out a little whimper, and lunged across the room, nearly knocking him over as she hugged him.

"YOU LEFT ME ALL ALONE!" she wailed. The employee Kurama was speaking to cast an odd look at her.

"Is that Shadow Jaganshi?"

"Erm... Yes," Kurama said. "She may seem a bit odd, but she's really quite competent and sane."

"Hm. She'll take the written test first, then the hands-on test. Got it?"

"Yes."

"This way, miss," the man said, leading Shadow to a door. He looked her over, at her arms and whatnot to make sure she hadn't written answers all up and down on her skin, then led her into the room, handing her some stapled papers and a sharpened pencil. "You have an hour to complete this test. Take a seat."

There were school student desks in several rows in the room. Shadow plopped down clear in the back.

"Begin," the instructor guy said.

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

"We'll check this while you do your driving," a man told Shadow when the instructor handed in her paper to him. She grinned.

"Thankya!"

"How do you think you did?" Kurama asked in the two seconds he saw her before she was dragged out the door.

"Very well!" Shadow replied cheerfully, giving him a thumbs up.

"Okay... Don't wreck my car."

"Don't cause any massive explosions," Hiei advised.

"Okay... Can I cause a minute explosion?"

"**No.** _No explosions_," Kurama said firmly.

"Aw, man, you guys are no fun."

Well, Shadow scared the hell out of the instructor who was in the car with her. She seemed to think too long about things and at the last second before she'd have to do something drastic, she did the right thing. It made the poor guy very nervous, as she also muttered to herself quite a bit. Of course, the guy didn't realize Hiei was keeping them under constant surveillance from various high places along the road. Shadow knew this and that's why she muttered. At one point, somehow quite unnoticed, Hiei rode on the roof of the car for a bit as there were no buildings to his liking in that area.

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

"You think you passed?" Kurama asked on their way home.

"OF COURSE, BAKA FOX! I am the almighty one! Of course I passed!"

"...Sure."

"Besides, if I pass, I can legally do something Hiei can't!"

"What, drive?" Hiei said.

"You know, I never thought of it before, but normally you have to get a physical before you can take your driver's test..." Kurama said. "Why didn't you?"

"I dunno. Koenma probably took care of it, cuz my demon blood would scare them off and I'd be in a government stasis tube until they decided they wanted to deal with my alien pyrokinetical powers."

"There's no such thing as stasis in the real world, Shadow."

"THEN THEY'D FREEZE ME UP IN A BIG OL' BLOCK OF ICE, AND I'D WAKE UP IN 10,000 YEARS AS SOME KIND OF ODD PRIMITIVE MONKEY WOMAN!"

"Actually... You'd melt the ice with your fire demon powers and escape, if you were anything like me," Hiei said.

"If I were anything like you I wouldn't have got caught in the first place! And besides, if I were anything like you I wouldn't be anything like me, and I'm more like me than you so OBVIOUSLY I'm nothing like you, or I'd be more like YOU!"

The boys blinked.

"Sure, Shadow. If you say so," Kurama muttered. "Now if only I'd understood anything you just said, I'd probably be a bit... less confused..."

Shadow suddenly plastered her face to the window. "Wasn't that Eclipse's car?"

Kurama looked in the rearview mirror at the car they'd just passed going the other way. It made a complete 180-degree turn and came after them.

"Yep. That'd be Eclipse."

"Can I jump out the door of this moving vehicle and magically catch onto her windshield and ride with her instead?" Shadow asked excitedly.

"No, Shadow," Kurama said. "We can't have you doing stupid stuff now, before you've even got your license. At least get the thing and have a few days of legal driving before you break every law written."

"OKAY!" Shadow said cheerfully. Eclipse honked her horn. Hiei flipped her off. Shadow just sat there peacefully smiling like an idiot.

When finally they reached Shadow's house, both cars pulled up outside and everyone got out of their vehicles. Eclipse danced up to Shadow.

"Did you shove a roll of duct tape up your nose?"

"Nope! I completed it completely lacking a roll of duct tape up my nose! Aren't you proud!"

"Yes! So proud, in fact, that you are invited to a sleepover at my house on Saturday!" Eclipse dug in her pocket and handed Shadow a folded up piece of paper, which the fire demon girl proceeded to _un_fold (which was a difficult and tedious process, as it had been folded into a little square about a half inch wide) and look at.

"You are invited." She opened the last fold. "You are invited to a birthday party. Where: Eclipse's house. If you don't know where it is, drive around until you find it, you unlucky child. When: Noon or whenever you wake up on Saturday until whenever you feel like leaving on Sunday. Warning: I have a young boy residing in my house, I think he's my brother or something, anyway, I think he might have a friend or two over Saturday. Other info: We'll have a campfire with which you will not mess without express permission, Hiei is also invited, and my parents will not be home, because they happen to be going to Kyoto for some business meeting or something. They will leave Friday and will not be back until Monday. How convenient."

"Sounds fun. Unfortunately, I will not attend," Hiei said.

"YES YOU WILL!" Shadow and Eclipse both screamed at him.

"No... I won't, actually..."

"Oh yeah, Kurama, you're invited too, and so is Kuwabara and Yusuke, I suppose, if they wanna go."

"... Do we have to buy you something?" Shadow asked. "I have no money. Hiei spent what was left lying around the house to buy my motorcycle."

"And you damned well better appreciate it, too," Hiei snapped.

"Yes, I appreciate it very much, Hiei," Shadow said, hugging him and kissing his cheek.

"Good."

"Did you pass your driver's test?" Eclipse asked.

"I dunno yet! But I think so! Cuz I AM THE ALL-KNOWING, ALL-SEEING, ALL-POWERFUL SHADOW JAGANSHI, HEIR TO THE THRONE OF CHEESE, WHICH IS CURRENTLY OCCUPIED BY A MOUSE! HOWEVER, I AM MUCH SUPERIOR TO THIS MOUSE, AND WHEN THE WEASELS FINALLY CATCH IT, I SHALL REIGN SUPREME OVER ALL CHEESE! AREN'T YOU EXCITED?!"

"Yes, Shadow. I'm so freaking excited I just can't contain it," Hiei said dryly.

"YAY!" Shadow hugged him tightly and he coughed.

"Please avoid constricting my lungs," Hiei said in a calm, slightly strangled voice.

"I am sorry, master," Shadow said, bowing.

"No you aren't."

"Yes I am!"

"No you aren't."

"WANT ME TO PROVE IT?"

"... What will that comprise?"

Shadow fell to her knees sobbing and hugged Hiei's leg. "I'M... SO... **_SORRY_**!" she wailed. "I'LL NEVER, EVER, EVER DO IT AGAIN! PLEASE, I BEG FORGIVENESS!" She sat there for a while, sobbing and crying into the fabric of Hiei's pants leg. He just stood there staring, as did Eclipse and Kurama.

"Do you forgive me, O Great and Holy Master?"

"Eh..."

"Must I start living in your garbage can?"

Hiei's eye twitched. "I don't even want a definition."

Eclipse leaned over and whispered something in his ear. He gagged.

"Shadow, I forgive you, and you need not do anything involving sexual acts with me to gain that forgiveness," Hiei said, sounding quite sure of himself and rather like he was either going to cry, laugh, or run away screaming.

"THANK YOU!" Shadow jumped up and hugged him again. His eye twitched yet again and he gingerly patted her back.

"Okay Shadow... You can... er... let go... now..."

"I'm so happy!" she squealed, skipping away.

"What was that garbage thing...?" Kurama asked.

"When Shadow says something about living in a garbage can, she means she's performing sexual favors for whatever person's garbage can she happens to be living in at the time," Eclipse explained matter-of-factly. "I often accuse her of living in yours, Hiei, but--"

She didn't get to finish that sentence, as she suddenly found herself flying into the middle of the road with a big ol' bump on her head. Hiei fumed.

"YOU'RE SICK!"

Shadow came skipping over. "Can I ride my motorcycle?"

"No."

"WHY NOT?"

"Because with your luck, you'd get caught. You almost did yesterday. You'll get your license soon, if you're intelligent," Hiei said. "You can ride your motorcycle to Eclipse's birthday party."

"But how'll you get there then?"

"I'm not going, re--"

"**YES YOU ARE!!!**"

"No..."

"You can ride on the back," Shadow said, all problems solved. Hiei sputtered some arguments, which Shadow disregarded, of course, and silenced him with a glare.

"You're going."

"Yes ma'am..."

Kurama chuckled. "Woman's scorn... The most powerful force in the galaxy." Hiei just glared at the fox's teasing grin.

"Who's hungry?" Shadow asked. "I'll make dinner."

"I'M HUNGRY!" Eclipse shouted, jumping up and waving her arms around above her head. A semi appaeared out of nowhere and flattened her into the asphalt road. She lay there twitching while everyone else hurried inside to avoid her stupidity and complaining.

"What do you want for dinner, then?" Shadow asked, locking the door to keep Eclipse out (if she ever would happen to get up off the road).

"Anything that isn't alive and or has not been in the fridge for more than two days," Hiei said. "In other words: Nothing you have in this house. Order pizza."

"YOU'RE SO MEAN!" Shadow wailed. She stood there bawling for five minutes until there was a loud slam against the door. She blinked and peered out the window.

"It's... it's... Oh my god... It's... W... W-w-w-we... eh... It's..."

"Spit it out!" Hiei snapped.

"It's a _monster_," Shadow said dramatically, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Oh. Well feed it some ramen and send it home," Kurama said.

"ARE YOU NUTS? You feed it and it'll just keep coming back! It'll expect me to feed it all the time! It'll grow and get horns and wings and feathery eyebrows, and a tattoo of a South American poisonous frog on its forehead! AND I'LL STILL BE FEEDING IT IN TEN YEARS!"

The 'monster' jumped up and pounded on the door. "SHADOW, LET ME IN! I WANT FOOD TOO! I JUST GOT RUN OVER! I NEED FOOD TO HELP ME REGAIN MY HEALTH! I HAVE TIRE MARKS UP MY BACK! OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW! I'LL STARVE!"

"**GO HOME, STRANGE CREATURE!**" Shadow screamed back at her.

"One of these days, Shadow will scream so loud it will effect the stability of your supports and foundation and your house will cave in on top of you," Kurama said, looking pained and rubbing his ear.

"Yes... I know."

"I'm going to fix dinner now!" Shadow said, skipping out of the room.

"I WANT FOOD! HEY! ARE YOU THERE? CAN YOU HEAR ME? SHADOW! HIEI! KURAMA! PLEASE? SOMEBODY? ANYBODY? MY MOMMY MAKES ME EAT OUT OF THE TRASH CAN! HEEEYYYY! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?"

Eclipse's screaming continued until Shadow cheerfully flung a bucket of boiling soapy water out the door onto her. Then Shadow got lunged on and strangled and Eclipse's wet clothes drenched the rest of the house and Hiei forced her to mop up the entire downstairs because she'd gotten a drip on his face.

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

"Well, what are you waiting for? Get up! We have to go confirm that my all-knowing powers got me my license!" Shadow said, jumping on Kurama's bed at 9:30 in the morning. He groaned.

"Get off my bed, Shadow..."

"But I wanna see if I got my license!"

"They aren't even open..." Kurama grumbled, looking at the clock. "You're not supposed to go until two... Let me sleep..."

"I'M AWAKE THIS FREAKIN' EARLY, WHY AREN'T YOU?!"

"Because SOMEBODY had me up until three in the morning!"

"WELL THEN CREAM THEM AND TAKE ME TO GET MY LICENSE!"

"THAT WAS **YOU**, SHADOW!"

"Why don't you sleep with a shirt on?" the girl asked abruptly.

Kurama took a deep breath as if to yell back, then looked confused. "What?"

"Well you don't have a shirt on, and Hiei never wears a shirt when he sleeps unless he's outside... What is it with you people?"

"Normally I do, but I was so tired last night that I just kind of collapsed on my bed... You and your stupid video games and cards and movies and whatever the hell else I was supposed to be paying attention to..."

"Okay. I see nothing wrong with attractive shirtless older guys sleeping in my house, I was just curious," Shadow said cheerfully. "Well, you get your sleep, I'm gonna go... I dunno. Pester Hiei about sleeping without a shirt on. Ta!" She skipped out, closing the door behind her. Kurama blinked, slightly confused, but was asleep fifteen minutes later.

Well, when eventually they got to the driver's testy place, and Shadow went in instantly and danced up to the front desk thing. Kurama walked up behind her. The guy at the desk looked up.

"Ah, yes. You're the rambunctious girl from yesterday."

"Um... I think so," Shadow said.

"Shadow Jaganshi," Kurama said.

"Yes. I assume you want to know if you passed or not?"

"Yes," Shadow said, nodding vigorously.

"Well, congratulations. You passed."

"WOOHOO! I _told you_," Shadow said, looking at Kurama and grinning.

"Congratulations," he said.

"You'll need your picture taken and we'll have it completed soon," the employee said. (I have no idea how getting your license works, here _or_ in Japan, so I have simplified it for **my** sake, not yours. Authoress authority, superiority, etc etc, complain and I kill you.)

"Picture... Cameras suck out your soul though..."

"No they don't. Come here," the man said, beckoning her to come around to a door to an empty room. He had her stand in front of a blank wall, smile or whatever, and he snapped the picture.

"There you go. Come back in an hour."

"WOOHOO!" Shadow went dancing out the door.

"Sorry about her, she's quite normal... She's not going to wreck," Kurama said.

"Shut up, fox," Hiei said, dragging him out the door by a fistful of his shirt.

Shadow was dancing circles around Kurama's car. "You locked the doors! I'm doing a magical 'the doors will unlock' dance!"

"Yes, right," Kurama said, hitting the button on his key chain. All locks simultaneously opened. Shadow froze, staring.

"IT WORKED! YEEHA!" She lunged at the door, opened it, and flung herself into the back seat, cracking her head off the window on the other side of the car. Kurama yelped.

"DON'T BREAK MY CAR!"

"If she didn't wreck it while driving it, she's not gonna wreck it by sitting in the back seat..." Hiei said.

"But..."

"MY LICENSE AWAITS ME! IN THE _FUTURE_!" Shadow said, opening the other back door and flinging herself out, doing a belly flop onto the pavement. "Oof!" Then she proceeded to do somersaults across the parking lot until she ran into a flagpole. It didn't stop her completely, she just kept rolling back, then rolling forward and hitting the pole, bouncing back, then rolling forward again, until finally Hiei grabbed her by the back of her shirt and dragged her over to the car, tossing her in.

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -  
****I have made some decisions over the past few days, kids!  
**After watching Hiei rip off his bandana like he does, I started to wonder how he keeps it on so he can just pull it off like that... And what popped into my mind but VELCRO? So... Me and Eclipse (who thought the same thing but I beat her to vocalizing it) have decided that** Hiei uses velcro to keep his headband on.  
**Well that decision was made during the watching of Poltergiest Report in Japanese. I love Hiei's Japanese voice, something about it is just awesome. So I was saying to Eclipse that I want to steal his voice. **I will steal Hiei's Japanese voice and put it in a jar. In my bedroom. Muwaha!** And anytime I open the jar, I hear his voice. Muwaha again.  
Decision number three was just made a short while ago while emailing Eclipse. I said something about a butterfly, and an image suddenly appeared in my head. Hiei with butterfly wings. Then **Hiei suddenly, frighteningly, became** **the new MSN butterfly.** You know, like the guy on the commercials... Picture that. Scary, no? Okay, well, I've stolen enough of your time. Ja mata!


	4. The Evil InnardEating FleshRipping Blood...

**(10-23-04, technically, it's 12:05 AM) Sorry, I uploaded this about three days ago and forgot to post it, and also had a crapload of homework... Or... something... I really can't remember why I didn't post it. Now, my review thingy is being dysfunctional, when I click to view reviews from chapter three it says I have none, so if I skip our review on accident, it's, well, on accident.  
kaida13-** Scaring innocent children is fun. That's what I'm gonna be doing on Halloween in a week... Going to Eclipse's house, scaring innocent children as they trick-or-treat... Actually they aren't all that innocent... You kinda get an idea of that in this chapter... Wow! Yay! Read on.  
**HanyouToni-** Poor, poor little Hiei... :gets mauled for calling him that:  
**kiinu-** Yeah... When I get my license, you probably won't want to come anywhere near my _state!_ Muwaha! Lucky for you that won't be for another two years, at least... Actually, I'll probably be spending too much time in the hospital to be much threat on the road... Wreck my car, break my arms, suffocate in 42 front, side, other side, back, top, seat, foot, shoulder, wrist, nose, eyelashes, and ponytail-protecting air bags...  
**A-chan-otaku-** I doubt he burns it off. I considered that but then he puts the same one back on sometimes... I assume, unless he carries extra bandana/wards in his pocket all the time...  
**Dark-Shadow-Goddess89-** ... _I_ want a flying pie... to hit a certain person in the eye... A certain person who I want to die... Poisened cheese on rye... Hey, I wrote a haiku poem for Japanese class! About a fox! Yay! :dances: It took me like, a second. It just was suddenly there. Boom! Bang! Pow! Kaflewy!  
**xkuroxshinobix-** you sound enthusiastic... yay...  
**Zephyr Minamino-** Wasn't that picture lovely? Hiei's so cute. Really. I can't say as that I can describe anybody else on YYH as cute, but Hiei, the least likely to be cute, is cute. HE'S CUTE! :dances: I'm gettin' a poster! Have Hiei on my wall! Yah!  
**Mari Youma-** Yes. Shadow and her reinforced titanium skull... We're learning about titanium in science class... Yay... They use it in hip replacements... I want a titanium hip... I want a titanium skeleton... MAHA! That'd leave a mark...  
**Spatial Monkey-** You sound very enthusiastic... If my friends (other than Eclipse) read my stories, I'd never hear the end of it. I'd be harassed. "I can't believe you wrote that!" "And you call _me_ a pervert! You have no room to talk!" They'd be finding themselves bludgeoned and lying on the side of the road someplace.  
**UnicornGirl-DragonLady-** Congrats. I dunno how I wrote that little speech about not being Hiei, it kinda just was there, and I don't remember writing it and it was weird and... Stuff... Whatever. I'm tired, dude... :falls asleep on the keyboard:  
**Silver Moon Assassin Crystal-** Yeah... That...  
**Psychopathic Maniac Girl-** I... Like... POTATOES! Actually, I kinda don't, only baked potatoes, or cheesy potatos... Me and Eclipse were having a discussion about cheese. We like cheesy potatoes, and cheese and nachos, and cheese on crackers, but not cheesy movies. We had to watch a 1953 movie in English. There was a growing, glowing, pulsating brain in a fish tank taking over some dude's mind... Laaaaa-aaaammmmeeeee...  
**Carri-** 'Ja mata' or 'Ja mata ne' is an informal good-bye, one you'd use with friends. Pretty much it means 'see you later.' 'Sayonara' is more formal, you'd use it with teachers and, well, elders... Superiors, whatever... And I don't feel like facing wraths right now, my weasel minions need a vacation... They're overworked and underpaid... Not that they mind their work, tearing humans apart and all... ANd I'm glad you had sick thoughts because that was kinda my goal... :D I'm evil.  
**Okami Youkai-** I like potatoes too! Wow! **:)  
Kiara Jaganshi-** Eck, review cut off... I'm taking Japanese, that's how I know stuff... Well, in this story and everything after, but all my previous stories, I just used what other people said stuff meant, so that could be wrong... in Bishounen Abduction especially, I used a crapload of Japanese without really knowing what it meant. Shame on me. I should edit that... But I'm too lazy. But Japanese is a really cool language and I like learning it... Funfun.  
**sanzoeclipseku...** Ah, hell, I'm calling you **SEKAH** (if you don't mind.)**-** You... Are slightly nuts. But that's cool! Did you really draw that thingy about the Kurama looking sexy what with the flowers and the petals and the sleeping sexiness of whatnot and all? And let's not even think of what would happen if the entirety of Team Urameshi was turned over to Karasu... Sick. Nasty. :shudder: We are not going to think about such things. No. Bad. BAD llama! BAD! No cookie!  
**LivingImpared-** You said "like" twice in one sentence? I said "like" like, ten times in one sentence, like in this one I've already said "like" four times. Lol. And, yes, I am capable of being annoyed, however it takes a lot, and few people can do it intentionally. If you _try_ to annoy me, you're most likely to fail. Cheesy potato. I, however, can annoy anybody I want to whenever I want to, I'm just too nice. And I don't want a reputation of an annoying, stuck-up, smart-mouth witch.  
**Water-Rose-** Yes, garbage can. She is a virgin. Sexual favors do not always mean the act of sex, and she has just _offered_ to live in someone's garbage can, she never has... Literally or figuratively... Well, I'm not so sure about literally, actually... :shrug: The phrase has nothing to do with literally living in a garbage can, where you throw candy wrappers and banana peels and whatnot. There's a long story to go with that term.  
**Saeble-** Sites didn't show up... Email them to me... Must have WR music...  
**purplepizzaeatnmonkey-** Yes, wonderful... Hiei... MSN butterfly... The possibilities are opening before my eyes... My tired... um... What? I can't think of any other adje-verbs... I can't even remember what the damn things are called...  
**Flame34-** I'll make a good picture of Norman and post it on myotaku... With all my other art...  
**MysticRaccon-** Sane people who read my stories seem not to like them as much... So it's a good thing you're nuts, for your sake.  
**Kitsune Klepto-** I don't see why you shouldn't... Knock yourself out... Err... Figuratively speaking, of course. But if you wanna take it literally, well... Not my concern...  
**Hedi Dracona-** Lol. That's an interesting way to look at it...  
**aamei1012-** Yes... I tend to have randomness in my stories... I am like, Goddess of the Random, etc etc and all that good stuff...  
**Celebrindae-** I was joking about the velcro thing, I highly doubt Hiei would wanna go through the trouble of velcro-ing his headband, though it might be easier, he probably doesn't exactly have velcro, being as he was in Makai for the majority of his life... Like, minus a year or two?  
**Kuramakicksass-** Good grief, don't read my stories during school! They have... er... questionable content. I'd get in trouble if I were reading something like this in school... Hell, I'd probably not even be allowed on the site... Bastards.  
**Shessha's Crazy-** Yes, ma'am, I saw a very small picture of that and wondered what the Hell Youko had butterlfy wings for... Fill me in... Unless it's major spoilers.  
**God... Review responses are as long as the damned chapter!**

**CHAPTER FOUR  
**The Evil Innard-Eating Flesh-Ripping Bloody Murder Look

"Wakie wakie, sleepy head!" Shadow said, poking Hiei in the chest. He grumbled, brushed her finger away, and rolled over.

"Go away."

"Nope! You gotta get up and get ready to go to Eclipse's house!"

"It's eleven o'clock... Go away."

"Hiei!" Shadow said sharply. "Get up this instant before I'm forced to sexually molest you!"

One blood red eye opened tiredly and looked at Shadow before he curled into a tight ball and pulled his blankets up over his body. "Don't touch me."

"Get up, then!"

"No..."

"HIEI!"

"Get out of my room."

"It seems like all I've been doing lately has been persuading other people to get up! I had to pester Kurama the other day and he managed to send me away, but--"

"Then you came and friggin' pestered me!"

"Yeah, well today I came and pestered you first. He's still asleep."

"Well why couldn't you pester _him_ first?"

"Because you need to wake up and eat the breakfast I made you worthless boys!"

Hiei rolled onto his back and looked up at her. "Why would you do that?"

"Because I'm a really, really nice person!"

"No you aren't. Why would you _really_ do that?"

"Because... I wanted to... Want me to bring it up here and feed you breakfast in bed?!"

"That'd be nice," Hiei said tiredly. "But all I really wanna do is sleep."

"Well TOO BAD! You're going to Eclipse's and spending the night there with her and Kurama and me and Yusuke and Kuwabara and her little brother and his friends!"

"Aw, hell."

"I'm gonna go get your breakfast and bring it up here, you bum. And if I must, I'll shove it down your throat."

"No need..." Hiei muttered. Shadow stomped away, but in the doorway she paused and turned.

"I treat you too well. It's like we're married or something." She grinned evilly at the look on Hiei's face and waved as she walked out the door. "Ta!"

A few minutes later she returned with a tray. She held it out to Hiei.

"Breakfast."

"How exciting."

"Eat, get up, shower or do whatever, then we go to Eclipse's."

"You're excited, aren't you?"

"I've never been there, and she has a little brother with friends I can torment! Yes I'm excited!"

Hiei grinned. "Yes, well..."

"I'm gonna go wake up Kurama."

"You do that."

"I will."

"Go ahead."

"I'm going."

"Coulda fooled me..."

"Oh yeah? Shut up or I'll give that food to the fox!"

"Grr."

Shadow grinned and went downstairs to poke Kurama until he woke up. She found his door locked.

"HEY KURAMA, WAKE UP!"

Inside, the redhead jumped so bad he fell out of bed with a loud thud.

"You okay?!" Shadow called through the door.

"You scared the life out of me!"

"OH MY GOD, YOU'RE DEAD?!"

"No, Shadow..."

"KURAMA'S DEAD!"

"I'M NOT DEAD!"

"HE'S DEAD, HE'S DEAD AND I KILLED HIM! OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, IT'S ALL MY FAULT! WAHHHHH!"

Kurama tore open his door. "I AM NOT DEAD, SHADOW JAGANSHI, YOU FOOL! LOOK AT ME! AM I DEAD?"

"YES! I SCARED THE LIFE OUT OF YOU!"

"**I AM NOT FREAKING DEAD YOU RETARDED GIRL!**"

"Pity, then," Shadow said, scratching her head. "I made breakfast, by the way. Eat, shower, then we're off to Eclipse's. If you don't obey me, you will regret it." She walked away. Kurama stared after her, then slammed his door and went back to his bed. Shadow spun at the sound and glared at the door, fuming.

**"NOBODY'S LISTENING TO ME, DAMMIT! YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO SLEEP IN LIKE THIS, YOU BUMS! THAT'S MY JOB!"**

"It's SATURDAY!" Kurama shouted through the door.

"WELL YOU SLEPT IN ALL WEEK, TOO, MISSING SCHOOL IN THE PROCESS!"

"I... Oh, damn, yeah I did," Kurama said tiredly, opening the door back up. He shrugged. "Not like I don't know it all already."

"Come on, Kurama. I fixed you and Hiei breakfast! HOW OFTEN DO I DO SOMETHING FREAKING _NICE_ FOR YOU PEOPLE?!" Shadow shouted. Kurama seemed to think for a second.

"Not very... Which makes me just more suspicious. Did you poison it?"

"**NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!** I'm TRYING to be NICE!"

"You're doing a good job of it. Congratulations," Kurama said. He hugged her and strolled down the hall. She blinked.

"What was that for?"

"For being nice, and for getting your driver's license. You're on your way to becoming something of a normal person," Kurama said.

"Aw, damn!"

"Damn?"

"I don't wanna be normal!"

"Don't worry. Once you put on your motorcycle leather and get on that bike, you'll be totally nuts again."

"WOOHOO!"

Kurama looked at her like she was nuts and headed down the hall. She spun around and trailed after him, staying about an arm's length away the whole time. At the top of the stairs, he paused and looked behind him.

"What's up with you?"

Shadow was silent, then cheerfully said, "Poke!"

Kurama gave her another 'you're nuts' look.

"Poke!"

"Sure, Shadow. Forget what I said about you having to be on the motorcycle to be nuts. You just lost it."

Shadow put her finger on his shoulder. "Poke." When he just stared, she pushed with her finger and then pulled her hand back and waved. "Hi!"

Kurama sighed and went downstairs, muttering something to himself. Shadow waited until he was on the first floor before intentionally falling down the stairs.

Hiei appeared at the top of the stairs as Shadow lay in a disfigured heap at the bottom and Kurama just stared at her.

"What just happened?" Hiei asked.

"She threw herself down the stairs, and now she's lying in a heap of pain at my feet," Kurama said casually. "I think she's okay though."

"I am _OH-KAY_!" Shadow said, waving her hand in the air. There was a sickening snap. "Ech. That couldn't have been any good. Well, I'd best be off to the infirmary to see if I can fix this..." She dragged, rolled, and pushed herself along the floor, muttering random things like "Wow this floor's a mess" and "ew... there's some kind of odd interdimensional portal under the couch..." Eventually she reached the stairs to the basement infirmary and fell down them too. Kurama and Hiei exchanged looks.

"She's not right," Kurama sighed.

Hiei shook his head. "I know... And I have to live with her."

Well, about an hour later, Shadow was decked out in her leather motorcycle outfit, had tossed her supplies in the backseat of Kurama's car, and was telling Hiei that riding on the back of her bike would be perfectly safe.

"Shadow. This is you we're talking about. Nothing about you is safe. Nothing. If I ride on the back of your motorcycle, I will die."

"No you won't!"

"Yes, Shadow. I will."

"No you won't! I didn't die!"

"He can ride with me, Shadow," Kurama said through his open car window.

"NO HE CAN'T!"

"Yes I can and I will," Hiei said, walking around to the passenger's side of Kurama's car.

"NOOOOO!" Shadow wailed as Hiei got in.

"Have fun, Shadow," Hiei said. She glared and got on her motorcycle, flying down the road at about 100 mph.

"She's gonna wreck."

"She doesn't even know where she's going."

"Not our problem."

"True."

"Let's go, then," Hiei sighed.

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

"I didn't go through all the pain of getting this thing implanted in my forehead so I could track down the location of _sleepovers_, dammit," Hiei snapped, glaring.

"It got us here, didn't it?" Kurama asked, grinning. Hiei was rather bitter and didn't answer, ignoring the fox's teasing.

Shadow came zooming up the road a second later and swerved into the driveway of Eclipse's house. She stopped just in time to keep from running into the garage doors.

"Wow. She got here without wrecking," Yusuke said. Kurama and Hiei, in their searching for Eclipse's house, had found him in the middle of doing the same thing and picked him up.

A shriek drew their attention to Shadow. Six little kids were gathered around the girl and her motorcycle. Some were staring at the motorcycle, some were staring at Shadow.

"Wow, can I have a ride?" one kid asked. Another one was commenting on Shadow's ass, a third was picking his nose. Shadow let out another screech and swung her helmet at the kids to make them back up.

"Shoo! Shoo! You can't have a ride and I don't want a bunch of children staring at my sexy leather-clad ass!"

"She's full of herself, don't you think?" Kurama said.

"But it's true," Yusuke said. Kurama sighed.

"The Youko in me agrees fully..."

"And you don't?" Yusuke asked.

"Of course I do. I'm just not one to readily admit it."

"You just did, baka fox," Hiei said. Kurama blinked.

"Yes, I suppose I did, didn't I?"

"ECLIPSE SHINOMORI!" Shadow screamed. "GET YOUR BUTT OUT HERE!"

Eclipse came walking out of the two-story brick house, clothed in her customary blue, holding a paper plate with a slice of cheese on it.

"Kids! Who wants cake?"

"Cake?!" the kids all cried in unison, rushing over to Eclipse.

"That's not cake! That's cheese! You're mean!" one kid said.

"That's what I'm here for," Eclipse replied. "To be mean to you dumb little kids."

By then, the garage door had opened (remote control, in Eclipse's other hand) and Shadow had managed to put her motorcycle inside to keep it away from the small children and their greasy, fingerprinty hands.

"What did you do with your motorcycle?!" a kid asked, looking around.

"I **ATE IT**, foolish child! Bwahahaha!" Shadow laughed maniacally.

"She _does_ have a nice ass," another one of the kids said. Hiei snorted.

"NO LAUGHING!" Shadow shouted, pointing at him.

"Sorry," he said, not very convincingly.

Shadow felt a hand on her butt suddenly, which she spun around and grabbed the wrist attached to. Glaring, she then grinned threateningly to show her fangs.

"You touch me again and I'll tear off your little hand, kiddo," she said. "There's only one person allowed to touch me in that manner."

"Who's that?" the kid asked. "Your boyfriend?"

"No. Hiei."

Yusuke 'Ooooooooh'-ed.

"You mean your boyfriend isn't allowed to touch you?" a kid asked.

"I haven't got a boyfriend!"

"Yes you do! Hiei's your boyfriend!" said the kid whose wrist Shadow was gripping tightly.

"WHO THE HELL TOLD YOU THAT?"

"My sister," the kid said, pointing at Eclipse.

"ECLIPSE SHINOMORI!"

"Yes?"

"You told your stupid little brother that Hiei's my boyfriend?"

"_No_. He's just retarded."

"Most little kids are," Yusuke said. "So where's the cake?"

"First, introductions," Eclipse said. She pointed to each little boy in turn. "That's my brother, Keiji. That's Jiro, Takeji, Hiro, Itou, Nori, they're twins by the way, and that kid there is Kotaro. Keiji is kinda like the perverted, psychotic ringleader. And children, that's Shadow, Shuichi, Hiei, and Yusuke. You, of course, will address them as 'sir' or 'ma'am' by their correct, corresponding genders. Mess up or make fun of them and I'll let Shadow feed you to Norman and the Weasel Minions of Doom. GOT IT?"

"Yes sir," Keiji said.

"Keiji, you're ret-tartit."

"Shut up!"

"Oh yeah, and if you touch Shadow or stare at her, you kids should be bludgeoned. You're like, ten. You shouldn't know about this stuff yet."

"What? Asses and boobies?" Keiji said.

Shadow's eye twitched and she inched closer to Hiei.

"I know how a baby's made! Wanna hear the story?" the kid continued. "Well, the mom and the dad fall in love. They get naked and--"

"KEIJI!" Eclipse screamed. "YOU'RE SICK!"

"But that's what happens! Now let me finished the story! The guy has--"

Shadow let out a screech and latched on to Hiei. "I'M SCARED!"

"Are you gonna make a baby tonight?" Keiji asked, looking at Shadow and Hiei. He, of course, was soon lying in a mangled heap on the ground.

"Let's go inside! I have cake and ice cream and candy and all sorts of stuff because my semi-rich parents gave me permission to spend enough money to feed me for a month just to feed you guys for two days. So, I set up a kind of buffet serve-yourself thing in the kitchen! Follow me," Eclipse said.

She seemed not to have noticed that Kuwabara wasn't there. Either that or she didn't care.

"Respect your elders, so we all go before these nitwit ten-year-olds, as long as somebody is between them and Shadow in line because if not she'll be groped again. And before you say anything, yes, I have to share my birthday food with those dumb little kids," Eclipse said. "Now! Get in line!"

Everyone got their ice cream and their cake and sat down in various sit-able places in the living room and kitchen. Of course, they'd all just got settled when somebody bumped somebody else, causing them to spill their ice cream and a ten-year-old pansy version of a fistfight broke out. Yusuke easily broke it up by taking the other kid's ice cream and dumping it on his head.

"I like ice cream," Shadow said stupidly, sitting in a corner still wearing her leather, eating ice cream like a little child.

Nearly an hour later came the fun part of the party.

"Who wants to play I Never?" Eclipse asked, standing up.

"Me!" all the ten-year-olds shouted instantly. Eclipse's friends all agreed too, eventually, and soda cans were passed out.

"Who wants to start?"

"ME!" Keiji screamed instantly. Eclipse let out an exasperated sigh.

"Fine."

"I never made a baby!"

"Well that's good to hear!" Yusuke said.

"It'd be ugly anyhow," Hiei muttered under his breath. Shadow snickered.

"Then again, most babies are."

"Kurama, this counts for Youko too," Eclipse said when nobody drank.

"I'm not actually aware that Youko ever got anyone pregnant..."

"That makes no sense," Shadow said. "If it weren't for Hiei, and me disliking him, Youko would have probably already... Well, you know."

"Just take a drink," Yusuke said.

"What if it isn't true?"

"DRINK!"

"YOU GOT SOMEONE PREGNANT?" Keiji screamed the second Kurama took a reluctant sip.

"Shut up, kid," Shadow snapped.

"Okay, I'll go," Yusuke said. "I never... hm... I never made out with someone in a tree."

Crickets chirped. Shadow seemed thoughtful, then leaned over to Hiei.

"Have we ever made out in a tree?"

"No."

"Okay, I'm good then."

"No takers?" Eclipse asked. With a sigh, Kurama took a drink.

"Oh?"

"Name a place and Youko's probably been there molesting or harassing or making out with someone..."

"Lovely past you have," Eclipse said.

"I wanna go!" Takeji said, waving his hand in the air.

"Fine."

"I never made out with anyone!"

Kurama, Hiei, Shadow, and Yusuke all took drinks. None of the little kids did. They made disgusted faces.

"Ew, you guys have made out? That's nasty!"

"Kissing is not nasty," Kurama said.

"Nope. That's just something stupid little kids think," Yusuke said.

"_I'm_ not stupid!" Keiji snapped.

"Kay then. You're retarded," Hiei said.

"You're mean!"

"That was the point."

"Shut up, stupid!"

"Don't call me stupid, ya dumb little kid!"

"I'm not dumb, stupid!"

"DIDN'T I SAY NOT TO CALL ME STUPID?"

"Shut up, asshole!"

And Hiei just looked at this little kid with the 'you ever call me that again and I will tear your flesh from your body and feed on your innards while you're still alive' look. Keiji, being oblivious to all forms of threats, just giggled like a little girl, thinking he'd won.

"Ha ha, I called you an asshole."

"Hiei," Eclipse warned. "I may hate him, but my parents don't, and if they come home and find him stuck to the wall with a large knife through his chest and blood sprays all over the walls around him, they'll be... well... furious."

"Can I at least scare him?"

"He's too stupid to get scared. Couldn't you tell when your evil innard-eating... flesh-ripping... bloody murder look didn't wipe the dumb smile off his face?"

"Yeah, I started to assume he was kind of retarded..."

"Not kind of. Like, majorly. Like, he's stupider than Shadow and me put together, and multiply that by forty."

There was a frightened scream from across the room, and Hiei and Eclipse looked around to realize that while they conversed, Keiji had gotten distracted by Shadow.

"Heppy! Heppy!" Shadow yelped, looking fearfully at her friends as the little chest-high kids reached for her 'boobies' as they called them.

"Thousand," Hiei said. "Multiply you and Shadow's stupidities by forty _thousand_ and you'll have the IQ of the dumbest of these kids."

"I'm gonna touch your boobies!" Takeji said.

"NO YOU AREN'T!"

"Can he touch your boobies?" Takeji asked, pointing at Keiji.

"**NO!** HEPPY! _HEPPPYYYY_!"

"Ohhhh, she's saying _help me_," Kurama said, finally translating her gibberish. "I do kinda pity her."

"STOP TOUCHING ME!" Shadow screamed, her arms crossed in an X across her chest. Still, the perverts kept poking her anywhere they found appealing.

Now, let's make a side note here, from the author.

I am basing this part on my EXPERIENCE, dammit! Eclipse's little ten-year-old brother and his friend find it amusing to touch me where little children shouldn't. And I can't hurt them because I'LL get in trouble for it! Her brother. I want to kill him. When he isn't like, sexually harassing me, he's either talking about disgusting, inappropriate things, like making babies, or he's being loud, annoying, poking me with his feet, laughing when I get mad, then... THEN... HE HAS THE NERVE TO ASK IF I LIKE HIM! EVEN AS A FRIEND! EVEN A LITTLE BIT!

**I HATE HIM! HE WILL DIE!**

'Sooner or later everyone dies.'

Yeah, here: I'll attack him sooner, he'll die shortly later from the brutal, bloody wounds. How's that?

Back to the story.

"Where'd you get those big things, anyway?" one kid asked, pointing. Shadow shrieked.

"**HIEI, YOU BASTARD! GET OVER HERE AND HELP ME, DAMMIT!**"

"They won't listen to me!" Hiei said. "They're to stupid to feel threatened, remember?"

"Leave it to me," Yusuke said. "I know how to get them away."

"Yes, I suppose another pervert would know what appeals to perverts better than anyone else here..."

"Well they already found something appealing," Yusuke pointed out. "But... HEY KIDS! LEAVE SHADOW ALONE AND I'LL GET YOU SOME PORN!"

"**YUSUKE!!!**" Eclipse screamed, appalled. But the kids swarmed over.

"Really?"

"Sure!" Yusuke pulled a magazine out of the inside of his jacket and went to the door, flinging it into the yard. The kids chased after it like starved dogs after a piece of meat. He quickly shut and locked the door, leaning against it to make sure the kids didn't swarm back instantly and knock it over. He was abruptly plowed backwards by Shadow hugging him.

"THANK YOU! Hey wait, you're a pervert too... Was that really a porno?" she asked suspiciously, backing away slightly.

"No, that was a car magazine, but there's girls in it... They have clothes on, though."

"Ah..." Shadow backed away a few more steps and suddenly spun around and put her finger directly between Hiei's eyes. "Thanks for the help, Hiei, you selfish--"

"Don't finish that sentence!" Hiei said. "I would have helped had I known any way other than violence."

"VIOLENCE IS THE ANSWER, THOUGH!"

"I know that, but these kids have parents who might miss them or something, right?"

"Yes. Probably. Unlike poor, pitiful me, who, from the age of like, eight or ten, had no parents. They staged my death and I ended up being taken in by some weirdo..."

"They staged _your_ death, Shadow?" Eclipse repeated.

"What? Oh, yes, of course, look at me, I'm dead! DEAD, DAMMIT! No, I meant they staged their own deaths, burnt down the house, and left me to wander around Makai and end up in the large establishment of an egotistical dictator," Shadow said.

"...You know, we never really found out about your real past..." Hiei muttered.

"Here it is: I lived with my parents. My parents either died or staged their death to get rid of me, and... Or maybe... Here's another option, maybe my father killed my mother and burnt down the house, and forgot I existed so he left... Then there's always this odd option that Hiei's my father!" Shadow said accusingly, pointing at Hiei again. His eyes widened.

"I'm not your father, baka! I think I'd know! And besides, if I was, I wouldn't put up with your fondness of touching me."

"Touching you?!" Yusuke said, suddenly quite interested in the topic. "Touching you where?"

"You're totally retarded and beyond perverted," Shadow said. "Get your mind out of the gutter!"

"What? I was just asking a harmless question!"

"It's harmful! Harmful to my sanity! I don't touch Hiei anywhere I shouldn't! Unlike those damned kids. They were touching poor little me anywhere they felt inclined to touch..."

"That _was _kinda funny though," Yusuke said. "Seeing you writhe and scream..."

Shadow's eye twitched. "Rephrase that, dammit."

Yusuke looked confused, then it dawned on him. "YOU SAY _I_ HAVE A SICK MIND?"

"YOU'RE THE ONE THAT LOOKS AT PORN!"

"YOU'RE THE ONE WHO TOUCHES HIEI!"

"YOU'RE SICK, YUSUKE URAMESHI!"

"YOU'RE JUST AS BAD, SHADOW JAGANSHI!"

"HELL NO I AIN'T! I DON'T LOOK AT PORN, I DON'T WATCH PORN, I DON'T GROPE MY SIGNIFICANT OTHER, I DON'T INSTANTLY JUMP TO THE MOST DISGUSTING CONCLUSION! YOU'RE A PERVERT!"

"_HOW CAN I BELIEVE THAT?_ HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE THAT YOU DON'T LIE AROUND NAKED IN BED WITH HIEI ALL THE TIME!?"

"**_IF YOU DON'T STOP BEING THE MOST DISGUSTING PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE, I WILL KILL YOU!!! STOP IMPLYING UNTRUTHS ABOUT ME AND HIEI! WE'RE NO MORE THAN FRIENDS!!!_**"

"Friends with benefits..." Yusuke muttered under his breath.

"I WILL KILL YOU, YUSUKE URAMESHI!"

A fun game of 'chase the Yusuke' commenced, a knife-toting Shadow following him through any and every part of the house, down the dead-end street, through the yard, onto the roof, out windows, in windows, over small children, past old people with walkers on the street, under bridges, over bridges, and through sewers, until finally, _finally_ coming to a stop, panting and gasping and sweating, doubled over with their hands on their knees, back in front of Eclipse's house.

"I... will... kill you... Yu... skay..." Shadow panted. Then she promptly fell over, asleep before she hit the ground. She snorted in her sleep, snored loudly, then muttered something about French vanilla cheese sandwiches...

"Well... That was... entertaining," Kurama muttered, looking at the two half demons snoring peacefully next to each other, Shadow clutching her butcher knife like a teddy bear.

"Entertaining barely covers it," Eclipse said, focusing her camcorder on the sleeping half-breeds and zooming in.

"You taped all that?!" Hiei said.

"Yep."

"How'd you do that? They went all over Tokyo!" Kurama asked, amazed.

"They went all over JAPAN!"

"DEVIL WORSHIPPING!" Eclipse said, laughing maniacally.

"I'm not even going to ask how devils tie in to camcorders and Shadow chasing Yusuke..." Kurama muttered. "Not even going to ask... It's unsafe."

"Yes, quite," Hiei agreed. There was a pause before the little fire demon suddenly announced he wanted some more ice cream and went inside. Kurama and Eclipse agreed and followed him. All the small children had been trampled into the soil by the insane rampage and were quite unconscious, therefore rather unable to follow.

Shadow and Yusuke snored away peacefully, oblivious to anything but their dreams of vanilla-flavored bagels with three-flavor sherbet on the side and exotic dancers... Respectively. That is to say, Shadow was dreaming about bagels and sherbet, not exotic dancers, and Yusuke was dreaming of exotic dancers, not sherbet and bagels...

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -  
****Lovely, no? I forget everything in this chapter, proof read it a few weeks ago, any errors are, well... There for good.  
Well, I felt like making a recommendation here... I'm currently reading a Harry Potter/ Yu yu Hakusho crossover... I'm aware I said I hated those, but it's really well-written, if just a bit confusing, it's called The Best Defense and it's by JoIsBishMyoga and... It's currently 38 chapters long, I dunno if it's complete or not... I'm on chapter eight. They aren't short, either. So... Yeah. Long story.  
Guess what? Hiei hasn't been on YYH for the past what, month or two? Well November 6th, two weeks from now, he'll be back! YAY!**


	5. Peaches

**(10-26-04)** Dunno why the hell I chose today of all days to post another chapter. I feel like shiiiiit. I didn't go to school, thus missing two tests and Japanese class... So due to my unhealthy, tired, overall _bleh_ state of being, I'm not responding to your reviews... I don't have time or proper mental function right now, so it wouldn't be very productive or amusing anyway...  
Oh yes, to all who warned me of shounen ai in "The Best Defense," I'm on chapter 26 and haven't found anything highly objectionable... I'm fine with mild stuff, as long as it's not up and saying they're gay... Which it hasn't yet, so we're safe.  
Read. Now. Or I'll throttle you. Thanks for your reviews on the last chapter and all before that, only four chapters up and I had 104 reviews... ::manages to dance slightly, then falls over abruptly and sleeps for the next six hours in the middle of the room::

**CHAPTER FIVE  
**Peaches

"Shadow... wake up."

Silence. Stillness. Nothing.

"Wake up, dammit, before I have these kids touch your 'boobies.'"

Twitch and unconscious shift to cover said body parts.

"Bagels, Shadow. Think of the bagels. If you don't wake up, the bagels will be forced to have another hungry person eat them."

"OH MY GOD NO!" Shadow jumped up, looking horrified. "GIVE ME MY BAGELS, DAMMIT! WHERE ARE THE DAMNED BAGELS?! I don't even like bagels! What the hell!"

"It woke you up," Hiei said, shrugging. "C'mon, you'll miss out on the campfire."

"FIRE? Yay!" Shadow moved a step, then looked down at Yusuke. "What happened to him? Why am I holding a knife? Why was I asleep, anyway? Aren't I at Eclipse's house?"

Hiei sighed. "Forget it." He walked towards the back of the house.

"WAITY WAIT FER MAY!"

"Fur may? What's that?"

"I don't... huh? What are you talking about?"

"Shadow, you're retarded."

They walked around the back of the house and there was a simultaneous uproar at the sight of Shadow.

"BOOBIES!"

Shadow screamed at the top of her lungs and hid behind Hiei.

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SHADOW, STOP SHOUTING!"

Shadow shut her mouth, and they were promptly swamped by little kids.

"CALL 'EM OFF!" Hiei shouted at Eclipse.

"I can't do anything! Run!"

Shadow did. She took off, screaming and waving her arms as she tore down the street. Hiei followed, more to keep from being trampled or bumped as the little kids went after Shadow than out of fear. He easily passed Shadow and she strained to keep herself within normal human speed ranges while outrunning the pansy boys, but Hiei still stayed ahead of her.

"YOU'RE LEAVING ME BEHIND!" she screamed. "AND YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE _BOOBIES_!"

Hiei snorted back laughter. Shadow caught up with him and spun, putting herself back-to-back with him. She used the butcher knife she'd mysteriously found in her hand to keep the children at bay.

"Get back! Go harass Eclipse! She secretly has a crush on that kid!" Shadow accused, pointing at the ugliest kid in the group with her knife. He looked frightened, like she'd fling it at him any minute.

"Scared? Scared? Huh, huh? Boo!" she taunted, feigning attacks. The kid eeped and back away a step. "I AM THE ALMIGHTY GODDESS OF EVERYTHING! GET AWAY FROM ME OR I WILL SMITE THEE!"

"What does 'smite' mean?" Keiji asked.

"**_Kill._**"

"Oh! You wouldn't kill me, I'm too--"

**"YOU WANNA BET ON THAT, LITTLE KID? I'LL KILL YOU BEFORE YOU CAN BLINK! GO ON! BLINK! BLINK! YOU'LL BE DEAD BEFORE YOUR EYES OPEN!"**

Keiji shook his head fearfully.

"How old are you?" Jiro asked randomly.

"Eighteen! I live all alone with my boyfriend!" Shadow said.

"Then you wouldn't really be alone," Hiei muttered over her shoulder.

"Shut up, perfectionist, or I'll knock off your arm!"

"Which one? I need my right arm, it's rather important."

"Than that's the one you'll lose!"

"Okay, sorry, sorry, I won't be a perfectionist anymore!" Hiei said.

"Yeah, that's right you won't!"

It was only five seconds later when the kids scattered, screaming "CAR!!!" and a blindingly bright light hit Shadow's eyes did she realize that she and Hiei were standing in the middle of the road.

"HIT ME!" Shadow screamed.

However, the car slammed on its breaks and barely bumped Shadow's leg when it finally halted completely.

"Bastard," she muttered, squinting to try to see into the car.

"Shadow! You're retarded!" Hiei snapped, standing on the sidewalk. "I know you've been hit by a car before, but you can only survive it so many times!"

"I didn't get hit this time!"

"YOU WERE TRYING!"

The car blew its horn and Shadow screamed. "DON'T DO THAT, YOU!" She kicked the car tire and walked around to the driver's side, opening the door and bending down to see Shizuru sitting in the seat.

"Have you seen my brother?"

Shadow fell over backwards. "And here I thought it was just some weirdo law-abiding citizen..." she said as she got to her feet. "No, I haven't seen him."

"He was supposed to be here, wasn't he?"

"I dunno. Yeah, I suppose he was invited, but that doesn't mean he was coming... He never said."

"He told me he was. He left around twelve thirty, but I just now realized he forgot his precious teddy bear... You mean he didn't get here?"

"Nope."

Hiei wandered over and stood next to Shadow. "Oh. Hey Shizuru."

"Hey Hiei. _You_ didn't see my brother, did you?"

"No. Was he coming?"

"Dammit. He must still be wandering around Tokyo..." Shizuru pulled the car door shut, turned her car around, and went back down the dead-end street.

"Huh. Baka boy must've gotten lost, do you think?" Hiei said.

"YOU ALMOST GOT HIT!" one of the little kids screamed, tearing across the road to Shadow. "You're retarded! You could have died!"

"GET AWAY, MINIATURE PORTION OF HELL!" Shadow screamed, horrified, making a cross with her fingers to ward off the evil. It didn't work. So she made a wide circle around the kid and tore back towards Eclipse's house and managed to lunge into the shadows behind Kurama before the kids caught up.

"Kurama, help me!" Shadow begged, hiding behind him.

"What? Why?"

"Because you're my friend and these little kids frighten me!"

"They're only six years younger than you..."

"THEY'RE PERVERT TOUCHY-FEELY PEOPLE AND THEY'RE SIX YEARS YOUNGER THAN ME AND I HATE THEM ALL BUT THEY KEEP TOUCHING ME!"

"Maybe if you didn't wear such show-offy clothes then you wouldn't have drawn their attention," Eclipse said.

"Shut up, missy, or I'll shove your mouth full of burning wood!"

"...Ow."

"Yes, 'ow' puts it mildly."

"So what was that those kids were screaming about a car?" Kurama asked, deciding a subject change would be good right about now.

"Shizuru nearly flattened me in search of her brother."

"What? You mean she doesn't know where Kuwabara is and neither do we?" Kurama said. "Because that's no good."

"He's probably lying dead in a ditch on the side of the road someplace," Hiei said, walking into the edge of the ring of firelight so the under lighting from the flames made him look even more evil than normal.

"And where's Yusuke?" Kurama asked, looking at Shadow.

"Sleeping. I don't know why."

"You don't know why?" the fox repeated dryly, not really a question.

"No. I don't. Should I?"

Kurama just sighed. "I suppose it's not to be expected of you."

"Yay! So, now I'm going to make s'mores!" Shadow sat down near the fire, impaled a marshmallow on a stick, and stuck it in the fire. "Kurama, be a nice friend and get the chocolate and graham crackers ready while I do this."

"Why should I?"

"BECAUSE YOU'RE A NICE FRIEND, DAMMIT!"

"... Who told you that?"

"Just do it, fox, before I pull off your ears!"

Kurama sighed, but he obeyed. Hiei snickered and received a glare from his friend, only causing him to snicker more, but he tried to cover it up with a cough.

Shadow rocked back and forth humming. "Hey! I just had a grand idea!"

"No you didn't," Hiei said.

"Shut up! I didn't even say what my idea was!"

"Well knowing you it couldn't have been even half decent, let alone grand."

"Who likes ghost stories?!" Shadow asked cheerfully, choosing to ignore Hiei.

"You can't tell ghost stories," Jiro said. "I'll get scared and my mommy will be mad at you."

"Your mommy is a pansy, kid, just like you," Shadow said. "Who won't get scared by ghost stories? I wanna tell ghost stories!"

"I wanna play I Never!" Takeji said.

"NOBODY CARES WHAT YOU WANT, KID!"

It took a while for them to find that kid's body, which had been blown away from the sheer force of Shadow's voice. Not uncommon, as she's quite loud and often sends people flying, as you should know.

"Well now what?" Kurama asked.

"GHOST STORIES!"

"Are we gonna have to vote?" Eclipse asked. "Because that's lame."

"No, we get to tell ghost stories," Shadow said, eating a s'more. "We tell ghost stories because I said so and I'm always right."

"...Okay."

"But aren't ghost stories kind of pointless?" Kurama asked. "I mean, we know what happens to spirits and souls..."

"SO? We can scare the little kids," Shadow said quietly to him.

"Oh... You're evil."

"I know!"

Shadow stood up. "I SHALL TELL THE TALE OF... PIRATE GEORGE!"

"Pirate George..." Hiei said, nodding. "Is this another one of your 'YOU CAN'T HAVE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE, I'M MAKING IT UP AS I GO!!!' stories?"

"No! This one's true!"

"I've never met a pirate named George."

"I wouldn't think you had! They all died hundreds of years ago! I'm going to tell the story of the LAST pirate named George! It's a tragic tale! A gory tale! A funny tale! The tale of George! It begins several hundred years ago with the birth of a baby boy in Tokyo. His mother fell ill and DIED when he was two years old! He was shipped off to live in Kyoto with his abusive aunts, Aunt Ichi and Aunt Ni! Now, his aunts were overweight, bossy, smelly, useless people and made him eat nothing but peaches until he got diarrhea and pooped up the closet they let him live in! I don't know if peaches give you diarrhea, but dammit, they did then. SO when Aunt Ni found this mess he'd made, she sent him off to live in the Osaka zoo, but nobody there loved him but the buffalos. Shortly after he met the buffalos, his rib cage met the buffalo's head and he was shipped off to the hospital. There, lying in the emergency room, he had a near death experience, in which Satan told him that he was to collect shiny things at all costs for the rest of his life! After being released from the hospital on a purely-peaches diet, George, as he called himself for lack of a birth name, found an ad taped to a telephone pole! It said, 'Pirate Captain wanted! Must be ruthless and obsessed with shiny things, and peaches don't grow in the ocean!' So George had a major attitude change that day. He damned the hospital and went directly to the nearest poorhouse and ate SOUP CRACKERS unstead of PEACHES! Oh, doom! Then he went to the nearest telephone booth and had a wandering samurai deliver a message to the pirate ship he'd seen the ad for, and after the man returned, George bludgeoned him to death with his own sword sheath, stole the shiny sword, and ran down the street screaming and waving the blade over his head like a raving lunatic, all the way to the Osaka bay, where he went up onto the ship, told them he was in command, and proceeded to point them in the direction of the nearest shiny thing. That shiny thing happened to be a coin lying on the dock sparkling in the sunlight. He sent a small little guy out of the boat to get it, told him to throw it back, then George left the small little guy on the dock, cussing and screaming and waving his fist at him.

"You may be wondering why this story isn't scary yet. Let me tell you, it's about to change. Now George, he quickly became the best pirate on the Sea of Japan, and he stole so much that his boat sank and he was the only one on the ship to drown and die, because though he went down with the ship like a good captain, he just HAD to hang on to heavy, un-floaty shiny things and he sank and drowned ten minutes before the rest of his crew was rescued by a passing rescue boat driven by a blue-eyed midget, but that's not the point. See, George, he went and integrated his soul into the mechanics of the solar-powered boat and, unhappy by his crew's reluctance to carry some shiny stuff, flipped the boat and drowned them all. He drifted there for a while until another boat came along and he went and hid in that one. Finding rats, he possessed them and used them to kill every person on the boat. They tore out the peoples' throats with their teeth. Blood spurted everywhere.

"Then, one day, George realized that he'd killed more people than he'd intended to. Everybody who'd ever gone on a boat since his death was lying on their boat bleeding all over the deck. He vanished for a few years but occasionally pops up here and there and particularly likes to prey on the small children who have the guts to sail. Never, ever set foot off dry land. You'll die. Instantly. And messily. And slowly and painfully. MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! GEORGE SHALL KILL YOU!"

Hiei sighed. "Somehow a boat-haunting ghost named George fails to strike fear in my heart..."

"I WANT MY MOMMY!" Keiji and the little kids were wailing. Shadow continued laughing maniacally for the next five minutes while Kurama and Eclipse sat peacefully munching s'mores and Hiei sighed and occasionally caused the fire to shoot ten feet in the air and fry unsuspecting moths. Their charred corpses fell to the ground, not really much more than ash.

Shadow was oblivious, still laughing maniacally, the under lighting making her look evil and insane all at the same time. Getting tired of hearing her, Hiei flung a marshmallow at her and it bounced off her head.

"YOU THREW SOMETHING AT ME!" she screamed, pointing and glaring so instantaneously afterwards that Hiei fell over backwards off the log he'd been sitting on.

"Jeez, Shadow, flip out on him," Kurama muttered.

"I WILL! SHUT THE HELL UP!"

"... Mood swings?"

"NO, DAMMIT!"

"Mood swings."

"BLAH!" Shadow lunged at Kurama and tackled him, first attempting to strangle him, then ending up hugging him until he couldn't breathe (another form of strangling. Slightly more affectionate, yet still painful).

"Can't... breathe..." the fox gasped.

"What?" Shadow said cluelessly. "Ohhh! I'm sorry!" She let go and he crumpled to the ground, eyes wide and chest heaving.

"Avoid killing Kurama," Hiei said. "He's actually a pretty nice person."

"HUGS FOR EVERYONE!" Shadow sang. She danced over to Hiei and hugged him.

"Do I get a hug?" Keiji asked.

"HELL NO!" Shadow snapped, spinning around and dropping Hiei to glare at the kid. "The day I hug you willingly is the day... uh... Hiei kills me!"

"I don't think that'll be soon, either, Keiji, cuz I think she just hugged Hiei to death," Eclipse said, poking the fire demon with her shoe.

"Uhhnnnn..." Hiei groaned, rolling onto his back, swirly-eyed.

"NO! HIEI! YOU MUST LIVE!" Shadow wailed, kneeling over him and putting her mouth on his to perform CPR.

"I don't think he's really dead..." Kurama said. "I think she was being sarcastic..."

However, Shadow ignored Kurama. She pulled Hiei into a sitting position.

"LIVE!" she said. Then she kissed him.

Eclipse sighed. "Yup, that'll bring him back for sure..."

"It will," Kurama said. The fire demons had their arms around each other and were kissing, completely lost and oblivious to anything going on outside their own little world.

Eclipse watched a moment longer before sighing with annoyance. "HEY! STOPPIT!" She bombarded them with marshmallows until they obeyed.

"Party pooper," Shadow muttered, keeping her arms around Hiei.

"It's my party, people!" Eclipse said. "Dur! And if I don't want a couple lovesick fire demons sucking face, I--"

"We're not lovesick and we weren't... 'sucking face' as you call it," Hiei said.

"You were KISSING, weren't you?"

"Yes, but--"

"Well that's 'sucking face.' I heard the term in school and thought it was interesting."

"It sounds really disgusting," Hiei muttered. "And I don't like it used in relation to me..."

"Then don't kiss Shadow and I won't need to. Why were you smooching, anyhow? You didn't exactly have a reason..."

"I dunno. She initiated it, I was just going along with her."

"Sure. That's why you're still practically sitting on her lap and your hand is on her leg?"

"Yup."

"What'd I miss?!" Yusuke came running up to them. "Were you two making out? You were! And I missed it?! Damn!"

"Don't worry, I'm sure it'll happen again before you leave tomorrow," Eclipse said bitterly.

"Jealous?" Shadow asked.

"Pssh! No!"

"Yeah right. How could you not be jealous? I'm over here with this highly attractive, intelligent, strong guy, and you're all by yourself over there with your marshmallows."

"And Kurama's all by himself, too," Hiei said. "But he doesn't care because he can get anyone he wants."

"Yes, because he's Mr. Perfect," Shadow sighed.

"Well then what am I?!" Hiei asked, sounding hurt.

"You're perfect, in my mind, but if you asked anyone else, you have flaws. Like, for example, you're short, and you like to kill people, and you're pyromaniacal."

"Pssh. So--"

"STOP!" Eclipse shouted. "You're being all... boyfriend/girlfriendy and it's scary... But these kids seem disgusted by it so continue if you must."

"Really?!" Shadow said excitedly.

"Yes! Kiss again!" Yusuke cheered. "I wanna see it!"

"Ha! Screw you, Yusuke," Shadow said.

"You'd like to," Yusuke joked. Shadow snorted.

"No, actually not. Not with Hiei around."

"Do you really want to fuck Hiei?" Keiji asked abruptly.

"KIDS YOUR AGE SHOULDN'T USE SUCH LANGUAGE!" Shadow screamed, pointing threateningly at the kid. "AND THE ANSWER IS N.Y.F.B.!!! KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS? NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS!"

All the kids looked horrified. "So you _do_!"

"I never said that," Shadow said quickly.

"Don't you think it's about time you kids went to bed?" Kurama interrupted.

"It's only ten o'clock!"

"GO TO BED, DAMMIT!" Shadow ordered. "The grown-ups need to converse!"

"What does 'converse' mean?"

"Talk. Now go away so we can talk."

"But I thought you were telling ghost stories."

"WELL IF YOU DON'T LEAVE, I'LL TURN Y'ALL _INTO_ GHOSTS!" Shadow screamed.

"But he said ghosts aren't real," Kotaro said, pointing at Kurama.

"No I didn't," Kurama denied. "I said we know what happens to souls, I never said anything about ghosts. But if you don't believe in ghosts, Shadow will eat your souls and feed your bodies to the weasels."

"Yeah! What he said!" Shadow agreed, waving a hand in Kurama's direction.

"I bet you aren't gonna talk, you're gonna kiss more," Itou said.

"BETTING IS ILLEGAL!"

"Stop shouting, Shadow! The neighbors at the end of the street can probably hear you! I'll get yelled at for waking people up!" Eclipse snapped. Shadow crossed her arms.

"Is that my problem? What sane individual sleeps at ten o'clock?"

"Well, kids, for one," Eclipse said. "Especially ten-year-old boys who have friends over."

"... I'm scared of the dark," Nori said. His twin brother Itou hit him.

"You're a baby!"

"Let's see you walk to the house alone!"

"Fine!" Itou stood up, walked to the edge of the firelight, paused, looking around paranoidly before he hurried back and grabbed Kurama's arm.

"Come with me!!!"

"Me? Why?!"

"Because you're cool."

"Oh, that's all the reason in the world I need to escort a bunch of ten-year-olds thirty feet to the door..."

"Escort the damn kids already!" Shadow snapped teasingly.

"Shut up, Shadow."

Kurama did end up escorting the children to the house, and he also ended up escorting them up to Keiji's bedroom and helping them lay out their sleeping bags. Then, he had to read them a story and find enough night-lights to light the room, the hallway, the bathroom, and Keiji's closet... Which ended up having a chair propped against it to keep the monsters inside. All the while he was doing this, Kurama was thinking how they needn't fear what's inside the closet but rather what is outside sitting around the campfire. Yeah, those ones. The ones that burn stuff.

"Can I go now?" he asked when the kids had finally settled in around eleven o'clock.

"Yeah. Make sure you close the door."

"Uh-huh." He stepped out into the hall backwards, pulling the door shut with a snap, then turned and found Hiei standing right in front of him. He jumped and cursed.

"Jesus, Hiei!"

"What? The little kids' fears rubbing off on you?"

"What, you think I'm scared of the dark? Ha. You know as well as I do that you stood there intending to startle me."

Hiei smirked. "And it worked, too."

"Pssh." Kurama walked past him down the hall. "So why're you in here instead of out with the girls and Yusuke?"

"Cuz they came inside after I charred one too many fluttering insects."

"...Really. Sounds like fun."

"Not really."

They walked into the living room where the other three were gathered.

"Have fun?" Eclipse asked.

"That kid is the biggest baby I have _ever_ met!"

"_I_ have to live with him..."

"Pity you."

"So what now?" Shadow asked, sprawled on the couch so no one else could sit down.

"So now you move so I can sit there," Hiei said.

"No I don't."

Hiei shrugged and sat on her stomach.

"Ooof! Get off me, fatso!"

"You wouldn't move."

"I'll move! Jeez! Get off me before your fatness makes me chuck up my guts!"

Hiei looked down at her. "Just because you're being mean, I don't think I will."

"SUMIMASENNNNNN!!!" Shadow wailed, grabbing his arm and pulling him off balance so he ended up lying partially on top of her. She hugged him. "I'm soooooo sorry! You're not fat! You're so far from fat it's funny! You're all muscle!"

The other three just watched this display of exaggerated flattery with their usual expressions used when dealing with anything Shadow was involved with. Their 'She's nuts' look.

"Do you forgive me?" Shadow asked pleadingly.

"Yes, fine, you're forgiven..." Hiei replied reluctantly. Shadow squealed.

"Yay! Thank you Lord and Master Hiei!" She hugged him yet again. When neither moved for quite some time, Kurama sighed.

"So what now?"

"I think they're asleep," Yusuke muttered.

"No they aren't," Eclipse said. "But I'm gonna poke them with this sharp stick just to make sure." She whipped out a stick from mid-air and jabbed Shadow in the side with it. She yelped and jumped, sliding backwards off the couch and taking Hiei with her. They landed with a thud on the floor.

"Oof!"

"Yep. They're awake," Eclipse announced, handing the stick to Kurama and sitting in a nearby recliner. Shadow dragged herself out from under Hiei and lunged at her friend, knocking her and the recliner both over.

"YOU DARE TO DISTURB ME!"

"I DARE!"

"YOU POKED ME!"

"I POKED YOU!"

"I HATE YOU!"

"I HATE _YOU_!"

"I'M RIGHT!"

"_I'M_ RIGHT!"

"YOU'RE WRONG!"

"_YOU'RE_ WRONG!"

"...I'LL LEND YOU MONEY, SHADOW!"

"I WON'T LEND YOU MONEY, SHADOW!"

"DAMN YOU!"

"DAMN ME! Wait, what?"

Shadow fell over laughing. Hiei snorted.

"Baka."

"Don't call me names!" Eclipse snapped. "I'ma gonna pummel you!"

"Right. Like that'll ever happen... You'd first have to catch me off guard..."

"I can do that."

"No you can't, I'm never off guard."

"You were when I bombarded you with marshmallows while you were making out with Shadow earlier, and when Shadow had hugged the life out of you, and when that one thing happened that was also Shadow's fault!"

"What? Why was it my fault!"

"Everything's _always_ your fault! You make Hiei be off guard!"

"I'm never off guard!" Hiei argued. "I may appear so but you can never catch me off guard."

"Yeah right... What about when you're sleeping peacefully in the nice soft bed in your bedroom at Shadow's house? Are you still guarding then?" Then she added as an afterthought in the same tone, "If you ever actually sleep in your own bed?"

"What's that supposed to mean?! I sleep in my own bed!"

"I was just thinking you slept in Shadow's more often."

"**WHY IS EVERYONE PICKING ON ME?**" Hiei bawled.

"**AND ME!**" Shadow added in the same upset tone.

"Nobody cares about you, I'm just wondering why they pick on _me_," Hiei said under his breath.

"Nobody cares about me?! Pah! See if I ever do anything nice for _you_ again... Stupid Hiei... No more cookies!"

Hiei quirked an eyebrow. "...Oookay..."

"And no more kisses!"

"I'll live..."

"And no more... Um... You can just not live with me any more! Because you don't care about me! I could get hit by a bus and you wouldn't visit me in the hospital!"

"True. Because you wouldn't be in a hospital, you'd be in the infirmary you made in the basement, if you had any injuries at all, Miss Indestructible..."

"I'm IMMORTAL! MUWAHAHAHA! But I'm still mad at you."

"Shadow, you're retarded."

"OOooh, retarded, scary word..."

"Immature?"

"Yes I am."

"Ugly?"

"DAMN YOU, HOW DARE YOU? Now I REALLY hate you!"

"Lover's spat," Yusuke diagnosed, nodding. "How cute."

"WHOSE SPAT?" the fire demons shouted in unison. They pounced on him and tore him limb from limb. "HOW MANY TIMES MUST YOU BE INFORMED THAT WE ARE NOT LOVERS?!"

Yusuke was once again left in an unconscious heap while everyone else did other things.

- - -  
Any mistakes, lack of dividers, etc, are the fault of proof-reading ages ago, not proof-reading the uploaded copy, and, once again, feeling like shit. Have a nice day.  
Oh, I'd also like to tell you I'm reading an absolutely _wonderful_ book called "The Dark Half" by Stephen King... Another book about an author with some issues, like Secret Window, only not quite the same... Cuz... This is about an author who has used a pseudonym for the past thirteen years and made a bunch of money writing crime novels under the name George Stark... And now somebody uncovered that he's really George Stark and forced him to go public and he says he's never writing under that name again, la la la, and apparently somehow (only being on chapter two, I'm not sure) George Stark becomes a real person and starts killing everyone... I dunno. But it's pretty good... Of course, it's got loads of cussing and violence like most Stephen King books, and one of my favorite lines was found flipping through skimming pages at random. This guy gets brutally murdered, then George Stark (??? I DON'T KNOW, HE'S A PSEUDONYM COME TO LIFE!), who had killed him, says, "Have a nice day, motherfucker." Muwaha. I love that line. Don't ask why, it's just... Cool.


	6. Shut up, Pancake Hog!

**(10-31-04 at 1:58 in the morning, I might add)  
**Now, boys and girls, before we get to reviews... I'd like to reccommend... Hm. No, can't reccommend that... Um... Let's see... Well then! I have no reccommendations appropriate for this space, so I'm just gonna say HAPPY HALLOWEEN! And I downloaded Manazashi no Aria and it's cool. :D Kinda funny for a Hiei song... But kinda... not. But kinda, yeah, it is. It's odd. Zigzag jiguzagu jiguzagu... And Ryuusei no Solitude is kinda Hiei-ish. Slow and quiet and puts me in mind of... Hm. Solitude. :shrug: What can I say? Now on to my 20-some reviews.  
Oh, also, I just realized that "To The Feudal Era" has 226 reviews. My first fic with 200 and also my first fic with OVER 200! :dances: Thanks to all!  
**Ah yes there IS something...** Go to my forum, to the 'fan fics' board, and vote in the poll I made on the topic of a Hiei/Shadow romance. Or tell me your opinion in a review...  
**Psychopathic Maniac Girl-** Eh... Okay.  
**Hedi Dracona-** Yelling is good for the soul.  
**MysticRaccoon-** Avoid hurting yourself on account of my stories... Or if you DO hurt yourself, and you sue me, the most you're gonna get is an empty Dr. Pepper bottle or a deck of cards... Cuz that's all I have right now.  
**HanyouToni-** And then there were none? I've heard o' that someplace. Dunno where. And I saw The Shining movies... Like, the old and new ones... I didn't really like it, I don't think. I don't remember.  
**kaida13-** Well I see it's time for me to retreat to a small crevice in the wall of this cave I live in and hide from you... YOU COME NEAR ME AND I WILL BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH THIS PLASTIC BOTTLE! What're those commercials about plastics...? They're so wonderful and whatnot (to beat psycho reviewers over the head with)...  
**C.C.C.-** Kay.  
**Water-Rose-** If I knew any big words, I'd tell you an extremely confusing psychological reason that little kids think they can cuss, but more or less it boils down to "They think it makes them macho." Know what else makes them think they're special? Little boys manage to scare girls four years older than them by attempting (or succeeding) to grope them. They think it's funny that "Hey look, this girl is twice my size, four years older than me, and the only thing keeping her from killing me is the law! Let's grope her!" I HATE KIDS!  
**Draikitha-** Oh. Sickness is not good. I was sick but I got a two-second reprieve from my headache when Hiei was on Yu Yu Hakusho. I squealed, and then he vanished. :sob:  
**kiinu-** If you put a url there, it didn't show up.  
**SEKAH-** Well I can't draw Kurama, so... :shrug: Yay for torture, too.  
**DuoJagan-** Sheepy... The sheep... _Omoshiroi..._ (Interesting). Why is it people always have minions or giant mutant killer animals or small furry killer animals or... Y'know, I should start keeping track of how many people threaten me/mention minions of some sort... I have Doom Minions (there are many)...  
**LivingImpared-** I have to get up at 6:30 for school... I hate school. A lot. It shall die.  
**Zephyr Minamino-** Yeah, its' got some mild stuff, but not enough to make me cringe away and go "EEEEW!" It's actually kinda cute in that story... What? I didn't say that. ::Gets bludgeoned by Hiei::  
**UnicornGirl-DragonLady-** I dunno if Stephen King books are good cuz I never managed to get through one all the way. I started reading The Dead Zone (I watch the show, so I got the book from the library), but then my mother read farther than me and didn't want me reading it cuz it had sex in it. O.o And I tried reading The Talisman but it was boring... Stephen King uses a whole crapload of detail. Sometimes that can be good, but sometimes it can be boring.  
**Carri-** Your brother tries to spy on you in the shower?! EW!  
**Spatial Monkey-** Heh heh. Wow...  
**Huyana Jaganshi-** I can't remember if Youko's in this story anywhere else...  
**i love chees-** I'm gathering opinions. It's a possibility.  
**insane-** Your name fits you well... Like I just said, I'm gathering opinions, it's a possibility. But I'm not really a great romance author, you know.  
**alucard-2004-** :stares: Don't worship the GROUND, worship ME! J/k, don't, please, it frightens me.  
**Mari Youma-** Yelling is good for the soul, but not too great for the throat or ears... Especially when you yell in a small space and it echoes back at you. :D  
**Yayo-** And I don't even have to try!  
**Shessha's Crazy-** Riiiight... Giant... Baboons.

**CHAPTER SIX  
**Shut up, Pancake Hog!  
_(I have CEREAL!)_

They only slept a few hours that night because of a variety of reasons, one of them having nothing to do with Yusuke insisting on sleeping in the same room as Hiei and Shadow to make sure they didn't do anything 'questionable' as he said. Of course. Nothing at all to do with that.

Kurama managed to convince Yusuke that it was stupid to do that because death gets boring after the third or fourth time, but Shadow and Hiei ended up sleeping in the same room anyway, just completely on opposite sides from Yusuke.

Long after the other three had fallen asleep, Yusuke lay awake. He looked at Kurama. He was awake too. They had a conversation about how sleepovers seemed more like something teenage girls would do, to stay up late to talk about hot guys, and how world-saving warriors such as themselves had gone soft and how disturbing that was, before Hiei woke up and threw balls of aluminum foil at them until they shut up and went to sleep.

They were awakened the next day by loud, annoying kids parading down the stairs to the kitchen, intentionally taking a detour through the room the sleepover attendees were in.

"Shhh! They're still asleep," Keiji said loudly. He tiptoed around the room looking at them all, snickering when he saw Hiei. "Ha ha, he looks like a little baby."

Of course, at that, all the others came stampeding over, eager to see the threatening demon looking so... un-threatening...

"Yeah, he does..."

"Ha ha, he's not really all that scary after all!"

"I dare you to touch him, Hiro."

"What? Yeah right! You!"

"Itou will!"

"No I won't!"

"Sure you will!"

"No I won't!"

"SHHH!"

The kids froze and looked at Hiei as he stirred slightly. Then he innocently went back to sleeping.

"Phew... I thought we were DEAD!"

"Touch him, Itou!"

"You!"

"No, YOU!"

Nori grabbed Itou's hand and pulled him down in an attempt to make him touch Hiei but all he succeeded in doing was knocking his brother off-balance. The kid nearly fell on Hiei but was stopped by a mysterious force... Called Hiei.

"Don't. Touch. Me."

"He doesn't look like a baby anymore," Kotaro said nervously.

"Nope."

"RUN!"

The kids all turned and stampeded away. They got to the doorway before Itou's pleas reached their ears.

"DON'T HURT ME!!!"

Hiei was hanging onto the kid's wrist with two fingers, looking more curious than threatening as the kid cowered and trembled. He hadn't intended to kill the kid, and he hadn't even gotten to threaten him, but he was already cowering and trembling and pleading for his life... And wetting his pants.

"Gross. Get lost," Hiei said, letting go of his wrist. He fell over, looked up at Hiei, then scrambled back to his friends.

"YOU LET HIM GO!" Shadow screamed, jumping to her feet.

"Yeah. He wet himself."

"Ewww..."

With Shadow's outburst, the kids' attentions had been drawn to her and her skimpy pajamas.

"Nice..."

"GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE," she shouted, grabbing a blanket and snapping it at them until they left.

"Why _do_ you dress like that, anyways?" Yusuke asked, looking Shadow over.

"Because I'm PROUD of my body!" Shadow said, striking a superhero pose. "No, I'm kidding. Does it matter if I dress like this? Nobody's gonna see me."

There was a pause before Kurama said, "_We_ see you."

"You guys don't matter."

"... Thanks, Shadow. I feel loved," Yusuke said.

"Those _kids_ saw you," Hiei pointed out.

"True... But it's not like I'm dressing like this for THEM..."

"You're not dressing like that for ANYONE... _Are you_?" Yusuke asked suspiciously.

"If it'll make you happy, I'll go change into extremely baggy, oversized clothes that don't show off any part of my body at all."

"No need, no need!" he said quickly. "It's just that I suspect you probably dress like that on a regular basis when only you and Hiei are in the house."

Shadow dropped down to sit on her blankets, sighing and balancing her pillow on her head like a hat.

"Why does it always come back to me?" Hiei asked pathetically.

"Because it's amusing to torment you," Yusuke said. "And it's mighty suspicious if you ask me."

"Nobody asked you, Yusuke. Leave them alone," Kurama said. "We already forced them to go to dinner together the other day, we can let it rest for a while."

"Shut up, Mister Nice!"

Kurama shrugged. "It's better than being Mister Obnoxious."

"Oh? You think I'm obnoxious?!"

"I never said that, but if that's how you interpret it..."

"That's what you MEANT, fox!"

"I'll say it again: If that's how you interpret it..."

"Stop denying it, Mister Nice Guy!"

"What kind of nice guy calls his friends obnoxious?" Kurama asked.

"YOU!"

Shadow sighed, throwing her pillow-hat on the floor. "I'm gonna go raid the kitchen. You coming with me?"

"Sure, whatever," Hiei replied. He got up and followed her, leaving Eclipse sleeping on the floor and Kurama and Yusuke arguing over... whatever it was they were arguing over...

Walking into the kitchen, before any of the cereal-eating children could say anything, Shadow warned them that if they said a word they'd spend the rest of their lives trying to pry their own feet out of their throats.

She then went through the cabinets and the fridge until she found ingredients for pancakes and made some for herself and Hiei. They were sitting down to eat when Eclipse walked in. She stood in the doorway looking at the plate Shadow was setting on the table in front of Hiei before saying pathetically, "... _I_ want a pancake..."

"Too bad, Sloth," Shadow said, sitting down with her own breakfast. "I didn't make any for you because _you_ weren't awake."

"You're mean."

"I shouldn't have to cook at your stupid sleepover anyhow! YOU'RE the host, _you're_ supposed to serve _us_."

"I was ASLEEP!"

"WELL YOU SHOULD'VE WOKE UP!"

"YOU'RE RETARDED!"

"Shut up, I'm eating pancakes."

Eclipse fumed for a minute before stomping over and grabbing a bowl, glaring at Shadow for a second, grabbing a box of cereal, again glaring at Shadow, then pouring the cereal _while_ glaring at Shadow. The cereal went all over the counter as Eclipse poured the entire box into her bowl. Once the box was empty, Eclipse glared at the mess she'd made, then at the box, cussed at it, then got a serving spoon and started shoveling the dry cereal into her mouth, glaring at Shadow all the while.

"Jeez. You'd think a person'd get tired of all that glaring," Shadow muttered to Hiei, eating her syrup-saturated pancakes peacefully.

"I know. She's gonna break my longest glare record..."

"I want some pancakes..." Yusuke whined, appearing in the doorway.

"TOO DAMN BAD, DAMMIT!" Shadow snapped, flinging a stick of butter at him. He ducked and it went sailing into the next room, landing on the floor with a semi-melted splat.

"Get mad... Jeesh."

"I WILL GET MAD, THANK YOU!"

Shadow fumed for a second more before taking a deep breath, sitting down, and continuing eating her pancakes like nothing had happened. Yusuke looked at her curiously, then glanced at Eclipse, who had continued stuffing her mouth full of cereal the entire time, still glaring at Shadow.

"What exactly happened that I missed while winning an argument against Kurama?"

"You actually WON an argument against Kurama?" Hiei said in disbelief.

"No, I just said 'whatever' and he heard 'Of course, Yusuke. You're right and I was wrong to ever argue with you,'" Kurama said, walking into the room. "He can't win _poker_ against me, do you really think he could win something against me that involves intelligence?"

"True, but you cheat at poker."

"I do not! Youko does!"

"Sure, whatever Kurama."

"So what's on the agenda for today, Eclipse?" Yusuke asked in an attempt to draw her out of her glaring, cereal-eating daze.

Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Yusuke blinked, waiting for a response.

"How interesting," Hiei said, putting his plate in the sink and walking away. "She says she's first going to impale Shadow's head on a stick for not making her any pancakes, then she's going to shove a fork through your eye socket because you're annoying."

"What?! She didn't say any--"

Eclipse flung her spoon at Hiei. He caught it inches away from his eye and stared at it in a horrified sort of way before looking past it at Eclipse.

"Don't read my mind!" she snapped, pieces of cereal falling out of her mouth. Hiei made a disgusted face.

"Such manners..." Shadow muttered.

"YOU SHUT UP, PANCAKE HOG! I HAVE CEREAL!"

"I HAVE A FORK!"

"I HAD A SPOON, BUT I THREW IT AT YOUR BOYFRIEND!"

"I DON'T HAVE A BOYFRIEND!"

"I DON'T EITHER!"

"HA HA!"

"WHAT'RE YOU LAUGHING ABOUT? YOU JUST SAID YOU DON'T HAVE A BOYFRIEND!"

"But I have HIEI and he's all I need."

"What is with this...?" Yusuke muttered. "She yells at me when I say she looks like she's in love with Hiei, but then she says things like that that sound like she's, you know, well, in love."

"Love in an emotion foreign to both of us," Hiei said. "So we can't have any love between us."

"...So you just make out for the hell of it?"

Hiei sighed and walked away.

"What'd I say?"

Kurama just sighed and followed Hiei.

"What? What'd I say?" Yusuke turned to Shadow. "What'd I say?"

"Who knows..." Shadow, just to follow suit but for no particular reason otherwise, sighed and walked away.

Eclipse continued glaring in the direction Shadow had gone until Hiei came walking back and handed her her spoon.

"Here, you threw this at me."

Then he walked away again, leaving Eclipse to finish her cereal in a glaring sort of way. The ten-year-olds had sat through all this and were rather puzzled.

When Eclipse finished her cereal and dropped her bowl and spoon into the sink with a loud clatter, she walked into the living room to find Hiei and Yusuke playing bloody knuckles. Shadow was snoozing on the couch and Kurama was staring out the window, absentmindedly spinning a rose between his fingers.

She'd just sat down when Kurama stood abruptly and went to the front door.

"Huh?" Yusuke said, distracted for two seconds. Hiei hit him in the side of the head and got up.

"I win," he declared, then went to see what had caught Kurama's interest outside.

"That's not fair! You cheated!" Yusuke accused, chasing after him. Eclipse shrugged and went after them.

Outside, they discovered that _Kuwabara_ had been what had caught Kurama's attention.

"Guys, I got a little lost," the boy said.

"You got lost and then what?" Hiei said. "You look like you've been through a paper shredder."

"First, I--"

"How interesting!!!" Hiei said, mock-cheerfully, clapping his hands together. "I didn't really care." He turned and walked back to the house.

"What's his problem?" Kuwabara asked.

"He doesn't like you, baka! You've known him how long and has he ever once been nice to you?" Yusuke said.

"Um... Let me think..."

"We don't have time for that. What happened to you?" Kurama said.

"First, I was attacked by a wild tiger at the zoo. After that, I was mugged as I left the hospital and the guy got away with my extra bandages. So I was at the hospital and had no idea how to get here, so I just started walking... I ended up getting chased by a pack of street dogs and I tripped and fell in a ditch, where I slept last night. When I woke up this morning, I headed in the direction I thought I'd heard Shadow's voice coming from yesterday and I ended up here. Am I at Eclipse's?"

"No, Kuwabara, you're at McDonald's," Yusuke said sarcastically. Kuwabara looked around, confused.

"Huh?"

"He's being sarcastic," Kurama informed the baka, secretly thinking, 'Why am I friends with this idiot again...?'

There was a shriek from inside.

"Dammit, those kids are harassing Shadow again..." Eclipse said, jogging back into the house. When she got inside, she saw that Shadow was not being touched in any way but was rather trying to fend off one of the kids, who was holding a kitten.

"Get it away! I hate cats!"

"Kitty!" Kuwabara went running across the room to the kid. He scared the little boy, who screamed, startling the cat. The cat hissed, scratched the kid's arms and Kuwabara's face until it got away and streaked across the room to Kurama, lunging up and sinking its claws through the fabric of his shirt and into his chest. He yelped, but the cat climbed up and stood on his shoulder.

"Stupid cat," Kurama muttered, looking at the holes in his shirt.

"It's evil! Evil, I tell you!" Shadow said, making a cross with her fingers. The cat gazed at her for a second before settling down to clean itself.

"Not on my shoulder, cat," Kurama said, grabbing the furball by the scruff of its neck and setting it on Yusuke's head.

"My hair! I just gelled it!" He took the cat and flung it at Hiei. It wailed and hit into Hiei's bare chest, clawing its way up onto his shoulder then jumping to the ground and tearing across the room in Shadow's general direction. She shrieked again and lunged out of the way, but the cat didn't go after her. It just went and jumped up into the windowsill and sat there cleaning itself.

"Ugly, horrid, stupid, evil creature!" Shadow growled. She glared at the cat, then blinked. "It _is_ kinda cute though..."

"AGH! BAKA!" Hiei said. "You're so stupid!"

"Oh, I'm sorry! It hurt you! I should still hate it. Dumb cat! Ugly, stupid cat! I hate you! You hurt Hiei! How dare you?"

"It hurt me, too..." Kurama reminded her pathetically.

"And it messed up my hair," Yusuke said.

"It messed up Kuwabara's face, but you can't really make it much worse than it is," Hiei said.

"Okay, I feel a little pity for Kurama, but none for Yusuke or the baka."

"Your kindness is overwhelming," Yusuke said dryly.

"I know! Isn't it?" Shadow replied cheerfully.

"I was being sarcastic, Shadow."

"Well in that case, DAMN YOU!" Shadow pouted for a second before walking over to Hiei and looking at his scratches. "Bloody... Nice. Come along children, Shadow will nurse your wounds..."

"I don't think they're really all that bad," Kurama said.

"Shut up! I'm gonna nurse your freakin' wounds! Appreciate it, dammit!"

"Okay, okay..."

So while Shadow, still in her skimpy pajamas, went about nursing their 'fatal wounds,' Yusuke sat down and filled in Kuwabara on everything he'd missed. Eclipse yelled at the little kids and told them to go outside, play with their kitten, and get hit by a semi. They argued for a little bit until Shadow flipped out and told them her injured patients needed their rest so shut up.

An hour or so later, everybody was wearing normal clothes instead of pajamas or their jeans from the previous day, and they were sitting in a circle in the front lawn, discussing what to do next.

"We could play a game."

"We could sleep. Yes. Sleeping sounds good."

"No it doesn't, stupid!"

"... Does to me..."

"We could, uh... play kickball! Yeah!"

"There's always the possibility that we could sleep."

"Shut up, stupid! We're not sleeping!"

"Then we can meditate!"

"No!"

"There's always the option of sitting here arguing about what to do for the rest of the day," Hiei snapped. Everybody stared.

"Who votes for kickball?" Eclipse asked, raising her hand.

"Well, kickball or sleep or stay home and get harassed by little kids, I say kickball," Yusuke said, raising his hand. Kuwabara agreed.

"Three against... Three. Damn you!" Eclipse snapped. "Wait, Shadow doesn't count."

"Why not?!"

"Because, uh... You kissed Hiei yesterday. Yeah. That's it."

"That's not a legitimate reason, onna!"

"Shut up, it is at my party!"

"YOU'RE EVIL!"

"We're playing kickball!" Eclipse announced coldly. "Me, Yusuke, and baka versus unwilling demons and psychotic half-breed girl! YOU WILL LOSE, PANSIES!"

"I'm not a pansy," Hiei said. "If I'm forced to play this dumb game, you'll lose."

"What do you wanna bet?"

"TWENTY BUCKS!" Shadow said before Hiei could say anything.

"YOU'RE ON, LOSER!"

"_YOU'RE_ THE LOSER!"

"WE'LL SEE!"

The girls glared for a second before Eclipse stomped off to get a kickball. She came back a minute later and led the way to a large field behind a neighbor's house.

"We're batting first," she said.

"Why do you call it batting? You're kicking," Shadow said.

"Shut the hell up!"

Eclipse and Shadow argued until Hiei stole the ball and flung it at Eclipse's head to shut her up. She ducked and it smacked Kuwabara in the face.

"Take that as a warning! Stop arguing, dammit!" Hiei snapped.

"Yes MA'AM!" Eclipse snapped. She then pointed out the bases, laid down the rules, and Kurama pitched the ball.

See?! Even world-saving heroes and demons can have fun, as long as they don't think too highly of themselves... Like, "Oh, kickball is for babies!" They're only sixteen, several hundred, and who-knows-how-old, after all, with super speed, spirit energy, and other odd abilities. But hey, they're just a bunch of normal kids as far as anyone else is concerned, right? So act the part, dammit!

"OUT!"

"What?! That's not out!"

"Yes it is! I told you that tree is out of bounds!"

"You did not, baka! You just made that up because we're winning!"

"I did not! Didn't I say that was out, Yusuke?"

"That's what I heard..."

Hiei's eye twitched. "Fox."

"Yes?" Kurama replied, stepping to Hiei's side.

"Hurt them, or I will."

Kurama walked out onto the field, hit Yusuke in the side of the head with a shoe (dunno where he got it, cuz he still had both his), walked over to Eclipse and pulled her hair, then walked back over to Hiei.

"Happy?"

"They're still standing."

"You said hurt them, not kill them!"

"They're cheating, though."

"Yes, but--"

"Can you tell I'm trying to be calm about this?"

"Yes, Hiei, you're doing a good job of controlling your anger. I commend you."

"Let someone else kick, Hiei! You're out!" Yusuke taunted.

Boom.

Next thing Yusuke knew, he was lying on the ground with a bloody nose.

"OW! THAT'S FIVE POINTS FOR ASSAULT ON THE PITCHER!"

"Five points won't save your butt."

"Damn you!"

Hiei shrugged and casually walked back to Kurama, whistling and spinning the ball on his fingertip.

"I'm content. You can kick," he said, sounding quite at peace as he tossed the ball to Kurama and walked back to stand in the shade of a nearby tree.

Shadow, meanwhile, had fallen asleep standing on second base.

"Sleeping on the field! Five points from your team to ours!" Yusuke said, annoyed with Hiei's assault and eager to take off points for whatever he could.

"That's just plain bad sportsmanship," Shadow snapped, throwing a dirt clod at him. "I wasn't asleep, I was studying the insides of my eyelids! Very diligently! Dammit!"

"Sure you were," Yuuske snapped, picking dirt out of his ear. "And I'm Harry Potter!"

"Really?"

"No, you idiot!"

"'Kay. Cuz I didn't see any resemblance, aside from the black hair..."

Yusuke groaned. "You're just plain retarded is all. Just retarded. I should take off points for your plain stupidity, but I'm nicer than that. It's something genetic, I think, and you can't help who your parents are."

Shadow scratched her head. "I don't even know who my parents are."

"How interesting, and mine are dead," Eclipse said.

"So're mine, but you don't see me crying over it," Shadow said.

"I'm not crying either."

"WHAT'RE YOU DOING, YOU'RE TALKING TO THE ENEMY!" Yusuke screamed at Eclipse. "STOPPIT!"

"YOU WERE!"

"SO? I'M PRIVILEGED!"

"SO AM I!"

"NOT WHEN I'M IN CHARGE!"

"WELL WHAT FOOL PUT YOU IN CHARGE?"

"ME!"

Kurama sighed and sat down. When they continued arguing, he dropped over backwards and lay in the grass, closing his eyes and dozing off. Hiei was sleeping lightly in the shade of a tree, and Shadow had gone back to snoozing while standing. Kuwabara gave up and started drawing in the fine dirt of the path between bases.

It took a good bit of time before Eclipse blinked and looked around. "They're all asleep," she stated plainly.

"They are, aren't they?" Yusuke agreed. Eclipse took a deep breath.

"WAKE THE HELL UP, YOU LAZY BUMS!!!"

Kurama and Hiei jumped. Shadow fell over, every muscle in her body suddenly deciding it would no longer work.

"I'M GOING HOME, DAMMIT!" she screamed, annoyed.

"I'm coming with you," Hiei said, getting up.

"What? Hey, you can't all just leave like that!" Eclipse complained.

"Yes we can! You woke me up abruptly without mentioning food! Damn you!" Shadow stomped in the direction of Eclipse's house. Hiei followed more placidly.

"But... But... You're so mean... Can you believe them? The nerve!"

Shadow managed to escape from the house in her leather without getting poked or touched or gawked at by ten-year-olds. She shot down the street, Hiei on the back of her bike hanging onto her for dear life. Eclipse glared at their retreating backs and cursed loud enough for half of Tokyo to hear.

"Eager to go home and be _alone_ together, that's it," Yusuke decided. "Well we won't grant them that. Kurama! Go on, spy on them!"

"Me?! Why me?"

"You're the cunning fox, aren't you?"

"Yes, but I'm not a spy, I'm a--"

"Who cares?! Go after them!"

"You're stupid, Yusuke. I'm sorry, but it's true. You're genuinely retarded."

"And you smell like flowers, but you don't see me picking at you about it!"

"Because those flowers can easily be your death," Kurama said, narrowing his eyes slightly.

"Whatever! Go spy! Go! Get! On second thought, I'll come with you!"

"But... That leaves me with Kuwabara and a bunch of ten-year-olds!" Eclipse whined.

"No, I gotta go, cuz here comes Shizuru," Kuwabara said.

And so ended Eclipse's great sleepover... It was fun while it lasted... Maybe...

**- . . . . . . -  
**I've lost track. Hopefully I posted the right chapter...


	7. I Have Magical Powers Like That

**(11-5-04) Ah, Friday... Hiei's back on YYH tomorrow! He was on last week for two seconds! Yay! Ahem... Anyway... I kinda was forgetting to update... Oops. This is the last chapter.  
Mari Youma-** Down with small children! Get your torches and pitchforks! (this is coming from a future aunt...)  
**moron-** Thank you, moron, your name suits you well and now I am haunted by the word "lemon." Every time I see/hear "lemon" I get horrid images and it's all your FAULT! How does that make you feel? Probably not all that bad, because you don't care about me, you just want me to write a story about Hiei and Shadow fucking... ::shudder:: And this isn't supposed to be a hiei/shadow fic, exactly, it's just got more romance than my others do.  
**Zephyr Minamino-** Kurama couldn't be stupid unless you bribed him...  
**Pyschopathic Maniac Girl-** I don't watch YuGiOh. Regularly. I've seen it, and didn't particularly like it. Just Kaiba. And only sort of.  
**Hedi Dracona-** Jingly bells of doom?  
**kiinu-** Evil siblings. I have an evil older sister. She doesn't bite or claw, she just yells and hovers over my shoulder... Grr... And she's obsessed with porpoises...  
**Carri-** Dare I ask what sick idea you got? Cuz... It couldn't be all that bad... Well, it could... But... Yeah, whatever.  
**Water-Rose-** Went to bed at six? I went to bed at five on the night the time changed, so really it was six, and I slept until two in the afternoon the next day... That was a Sunday... Saturday, I'd woken up at 8:30 in the morning and stayed up until like, 6:30, so that's a good 22-hour day... I started falling asleep in front of the computer and took that as my signal to GO TO BED! :D Spoons cut? Interesting.  
**Kuramakicksass-** YUSUKE IS HIEI'S SISTER! ::screams and runs away::  
**MysticRaccoon-** Young children are not cool. ::hits young children with shoes:: Die!  
**Spatial Monkey-** Yes, well... That'll work.  
**UnicornGirl-DragonLady-** Post soon... Yes, I think it's been nearly a week... Oops.  
**HanyouToni-** ??? Okay.  
**LivingImpared-** Have I ever mentioned I like your screenname? Cool. Anyway, thanks for reviewing... Erm... ::thinks for a second before passing out from brain overuse::  
**DuoJagan-** Yes. You are insane.  
**Saeble-** Thanks. Thanks a lot.  
**Okami Youkai-** I laughed so hard when I read that... JAGANSHI FOR PRESIDENT! Imagine all the hell that would be set loose upon the world...  
**xkuroxshinobix-** Yes, it's over with this chapter.  
**Fragile Phyche-** Yyeeeaah... Sure.  
**Onward with the last chapter, thanks y'all for reviewing! (I don't remember what happens in this chapter.)**

**CHAPTER SEVEN  
**"I Have Magical Powers Like That..."

Few sixteen-year-old girls go from being fifteen and doing nothing all day to being sixteen with immense skills at motorcycle riding overnight, but Shadow did, as you know, and, as often happens, her skills turn out to be a gift and a curse.

A few days after Eclipse's party, Shadow was out joyriding her motorcycle at about 120 miles per hour when she passed a multitude of bikers going the opposite direction. She paid them no attention but she did not get the same treatment from them. They all turned around instantly and gave chase. At the next train crossing, they caught up.

"Hey!" one said. "I'll race you."

"I'll win," Shadow replied.

"Then I'll fight you, you cocky bastard!" The guy got off his bike and walked towards Shadow. She 'eeee!'-ed and acted stupid until he threw a punch. Next thing he knew he was lying on the ground holding his crippled nuts and bleeding out his nose.

"Don't call me a bastard, baka! Is it not obvious to you that I'm a girl?" Shadow said, pulling off her helmet.

"What the hell's a young, pretty girl like you doing riding a motorcycle through our territory? Are you ASKING to be punished?" another guy said.

"Punished? I hardly think you could harm me."

"I'd like to rape you, girl. Wait, what? Oh, damn you, authoress and your typos! Girl, I want to _race_ you," the guy told Shadow.

"I'll win, no question."

"I have questions. Get on your bike, we start when the train is past. We'll go on back roads only, we can't risk it in the middle of the city. First one to the little pawn shop on the other side of Tokyo wins. Ready?"

"But... I'll win..."

"GET ON YOUR DAMNED BIKE!"

"YES, _MA'AM_!"

This only angered the guy further and he revved his engine. Shadow calmly ate a banana she'd somehow kept in her pocket unharmed. The train rolled past and the two racers shot off. About two seconds later they heard sirens. Apparently a cop car had been sitting on the other side of the train from them.

"Well this should make it more interesting!" the man yelled at Shadow.

"I'LL STILL WIN," Shadow replied. She shot ahead and veered off the paved road onto a nearly invisible dirt road. That left the cops to chase her opponent and therefore give her the advantage.

_Sort of_, she thought crossly, dodging a tree. _Boy I'm dead if Koenma finds out about this._

"WOOOOOOOHOOOOO!" she screamed, hitting a bump and flying twenty feet in the air. Upon slamming into the ground again, she lost control and was sent flying over the front of the bike and ended up slammed up against a tree upside down.

"Ow..." She peeled off the tree like a window sticker and belched when she hit the ground. "Good thing Hiei doesn't know about this... Actually that could be bad. I might be about to die and he won't know where I am or what I'm doing, and... He could like, go insane and everything, and--"

"Talking to yourself isn't healthy, you know."

Shadow jumped at Koenma's voice. She instantly leaped to her feet. "I know what this might look like, but I did NOT just wreck my bike."

Koenma looked over the area. "Good thing, too, or I'd have to take away your license. See that it never happens again. Go home, because that guy you were racing was just arrested."

"He was not!"

"Yes he was, Shadow, I know all. Now go home before I drag you home."

"You wouldn't do that even if you could."

"Watch me." And Shadow was grabbed by her collar and nearly choked to death as Koenma dragged her across the ground kicking and screaming.

"I CAN WALK, YOU KNOW! I'M NOT A DAMN CRIPPLE, IDIOT!"

"Glad to hear it! Go home."

"You hate me and your entire life is dedicated to spoiling my fun, am I right?"

"I spoil everyone's fun. Like if I forbid you from ever kissing Hiei again, that spoils his fun, no?"

"In a way."

"I don't want to know..."

"No you don't."

"So go home and fix your motorcycle. I see a scratch."

"WHAT? _WHERE?_ MY PRECIOUS HOLY BIKE GOT SCRATCHED? AHHHHHHHHH!!!" Shadow grabbed the bike and ran away carrying it over her head. Koenma snorted and vanished back to Reikai.

Only when Shadow reached her house did she realize she'd just carried several hundred pounds over her head for several miles running at normal human speeds. But she didn't realize it on her own. You see, she was running around in circles on her front lawn, screaming and still holding the bike, when Hiei walked out onto the porch.

"What the hell are you doing?" he'd said, and she had replied, "I'M CARRYING MY MOTORCYCLE HOME! I'm carrying my motorcycle home? HOLY HELL, I JUST CARRIED MY MOTORCYCLE ALL THE WAY HOME!"

And the muscles in her arms suddenly gave out and she was flattened under the bike.

Splat.

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

"Hiiiiei?"

"Yeah?"

"What's..."

"...Hm?"

"What is a..."

"...A what?"

"What's a... Never mind."

Hiei quirked an eyebrow as Shadow walked away.

"Okay then..."

"What was that all about?" Kurama asked.

"I have no idea."

"Does she do that often?"

"Huh-uh."

"Interesting."

"I guess so."

"I'm tired. I'm going to bed."

"Oyasumi nasai."

Kurama got up and went upstairs, leaving Hiei sitting on the couch channel surfing while eating nachos and cheese... The second the fox's door closed upstairs, Shadow exploded out from under the couch.

"Has anyone ever really died from too much sex?!"

Hiei stared at her. "You scared the shit out of me to ask me that?"

"Yes!"

"Well I don't know. Want a nacho?"

"Yay! Nacho!" She plopped down on the couch and took the offered nacho. "Why don't you have a moustache?"

"... Because... Shadow... Imagine me with a moustache."

"Like one of those funny curly Italian ones or whatever? Teehee... Hiei the Italian chef with a funny moustache! Teeheehee... Oh well, it's a better thought than Kurama with a moustache."

Hiei stared. "That's something I never even thought of seeing... Kurama with a moustache... Eek. Scary."

"Yusuke would look okay with a moustache, wouldn't he?"

"... Why are we talking about moustaches?"

"Because you didn't want to talk about people dying from too much sex."

"I'm not really informed on the subject, how am I supposed to tell you anything about it?"

"Through the use of magical powers."

"I see. Which magical powers would those be?"

"Well if Yusuke is Harry Potter, that would make Kuwabara be Ron, Kurama be Hermione, and you would be Malfoy. Except you aren't blonde."

"Thank God for that."

"I think you'd look good as a blonde, Hiei!"

"Yeah right! I'd look like Go-fu or whatever the hell that dude's name is on that stupid show you were watching the other day."

"No you wouldn't! You'd look good as a blonde! I'll prove it, too!"

"You are NOT dying my hair!"

"Why not?"

"Because I have black hair and you'd get some kind of permanent stuff and I'd be blonde for the rest of my life!"

"Jeez, it's not THAT permanent..."

"Psh. You're not dying my hair."

"Fine then, buttmunch," Shadow muttered. She pulled a digital camera out of nowhere and snapped a picture of Hiei sitting on the couch eating nachos.

"What're you going to do with that?"

"Put it in the computer and make you a blonde."

"What is your obsession suddenly with making me blonde? I like my hair how it is! Next thing I know you'll be wanting me to cut it short like Yusuke's, or worse, grow it out like Kurama's and put butterfly hair clips in it!"

"_That_ would be one helluva sight. I'd have to charge admission!" Shadow said cheerfully, walking in to the computer and sitting down. A few minutes later she had a photo editing program open and was ever-so-carefully 'dying' Hiei's hair. Hiei himself stood behind her watching the entire thing over her shoulder.

After experimenting for a bit, Shadow discovered that she liked Hiei as a blonde and with blue hair, but red, green, orange, and pink looked absolutely ghastly. She then experimented with the white zigzag, coloring it blue, yellow, silver, black, and a variety of other colors. Hiei just sighed.

"My hair is staying black, you know. Like me blonde all you want, I'm not about to put a bunch of chemicals in my hair just because I'll look different. If I cared so much about change, I'd start wearing yellow or pink, but that's the drastic, worst-case scenario. I might on occasion wear green or something. Isn't that change enough?"

"Green would look terrible with your eyes. What about white?"

"Shadow, you're not a fashion person, you know."

"I know, or else I'd be criticizing how you already dress and what your hair looks like and everything and I'd be saying, like, 'GO DYE YOUR HAIR YELLOW AND WEAR PINK AND WHITE, DAMMIT, OR YOU'LL REGRET IT!'"

"...Yeah, something like that... I'm going to bed."

"Can I have the rest of your nachos?"

"There aren't any left."

"Oh. Okay, then I'm going to bed too, then. My other experiments shall wait until tomorrow." Shadow yawned, got up, and went upstairs to her room with Hiei tagging behind. When she got up to her room, Hiei paused in the doorway.

"You're actually gonna sleep? You aren't planning on staying up until all hours of the morning playing video games or something?"

"Nope," Shadow said, dragging Hiei into her room and shutting the door.

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

"Hey guys, guess what? I've decided that I am going to spend the two-week anniversary of my sixteenth birthday doing whatever I want! And by that I mean we're going to go outside the city, and unless you have a damn good excuse, you're coming with me," Shadow announced one day.

"I've just contracted a life-threatening sickness," Hiei said. He started coughing and wheezing for breath, leaning on the wall for support.

"Oh, good! Then you can spend your last days with your friends, having fun!" Shadow said cheerfully. Hiei stopped his choking and looked at Shadow for a second.

"I think it's more fatal than I had first diagnosed." He collapsed and lay perfectly still for a good five minutes.

"Well then, Kurama, you're my new best friend! You get to replace Hiei in everything!" Shadow said cheerfully.

"Erm... I think I caught whatever Hiei had. Cough! Cough!"

"Eclipse won't complain, then!" Shadow said cheerfully.

"Nope!" Eclipse agreed, equally cheerful. She threw her arm around Shadow's shoulders. "Let's go!"

"Tomorrow."

"Wahoo!"

The next day, Shadow got after the boys with a tazer until Kurama finally agreed that he and Hiei would go with her to... wherever it was she wanted to go.

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -**

"So, Shadow, now that you've been sixteen for a whole two weeks, how do you feel?"

"I feel... Very HAPPY," Shadow replied. "Not in the least bit unusual for me, no?"

"No... But in this situation..."

"And look! I've been wearing that bracelet you guys got me! And I've ridden my motorcycle with my license! All your birthday deeds have gone to good use!" Shadow said proudly, giving her friends a peace sign.

"Yes... Except that you just caused a thirty car pile-up, Shadow..."

Shadow was sitting in front of her friends on a four-lane bridge over a large river. All four lanes were closed because of her, the cops were swarming all over, ambulance sirens were screaming, and there was a helicopter nearby for victims near death. She was presently sitting on one of the stretchers with blood running down her arm. The small stretch of skin between the sleeveless leather jacket and her long leather gloves had gotten torn up a good bit when she'd slammed into the road.

"With that wreck, any normal human would be dead right now," the paramedic who'd examined her said. "It's a miracle you're alive, but you're conscious and talking! I don't know... You must be very special to God."

"I sure am," Shadow said, grinning as Koenma appeared out of nowhere and walked towards them. He hung back until the paramedic walked away, then he stormed over to Shadow.

"What the HELL were you thinking?"

"Not much... I was kinda hungry, so maybe I was thinking of getting a nice ten-course dinner when we got back to Tokyo..."

"**SHADOW, YOU JUST CAUSED A THIRTY CAR PILE-UP AND YOU'RE TELLING ME YOU JUST WANTED TO GO HOME AND EAT DINNER? YOU CAUSED ALL THESE CARS TO CRASH AND YOU WERE JUST THINKING OF _FOOD_?!**"

"Well what else have I got to think about?"

"Maybe about DRIVING?! You WERE on a busy highway, after all!"

"Driving isn't something you think about, it's just something you do," Shadow said, scratching her nose. Koenma fumed for a minute before rounding on Kurama.

"WHAT HAVE YOU TAUGHT THIS GIRL?!"

"Don't yell at him, Koenma! He hasn't taught me _anything_!"

"Well then THAT'S THE PROBLEM!!"

"But I know how to drive, though, isn't that enough?"

"You know how to operate the motorcycle but apparently you don't know how to drive! There's a difference!"

Shadow stared blankly. "Not really..."

"Yes there is, shut up. If you could drive you wouldn't have caused this."

"At least my motorcycle survived!"

Eclipse sighed. "So you care more about the motorcycle than us?"

"Really, Shadow, I feel unloved," Kurama said.

"Aw, I love you guys, but you've survived worse than a thirty car pile-up! You could've survived if you'd been behind me!"

Suddenly people were running and screaming and the entire pile of cars exploded. Shadow and the others were blown several dozen yards away.

"... We wouldn't have survived _that_ in addition..." Eclipse muttered.

"Maybe not you, but them, cuz they're weird like that," Shadow said, gesturing broadly in the general direction of the two demons, who were lying on the ground with swirly eyes, their tongues hanging out of their mouths. She blinked and walked over to them, poking Hiei in the ribs with her boot tip. "Maybe not."

Koenma came stomping over. "You just indirectly killed nineteen humans!"

"It wasn't really all that indirect, Koenma... I caused the wreck, therefo-- mmph!"

Kurama had his hand over her mouth suddenly. "You're digging yourself an inescapable grave, Shadow. Just shut up."

Koenma was fuming. "YOU'RE IN BIG TROUBLE, GIRL!!!"

"...I have a feeling I'm in big trouble, you know?" Shadow said to Hiei. He hit himself in the head.

"No shit, Sherlock."

"Excuse me, what's going on here?" A paramedic hurried up to them. "This girl needs to go to the hospital. She needs medical attention. Come on."

Shadow was steered away firmly by the man and shoved into the back of an ambulance.

"It can only get worse from here," Eclipse sighed.

"Pessimist," Hiei said.

"Well it _can_ only get worse from here," Kurama agreed.

"Maybe they'll find out she's a demon and she'll be sent to the government, or worse, maybe she'll be executed," Hiei suggested.

"And you think I'M a pessimist?!"

"I never did trust doctors," Kurama said.

Koenma tapped the boys on their shoulders from behind. They turned curiously and looked at his passive face.

"I might be confused, but don't you think you should be **_DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT?_**"

"Good point..." Kurama replied meekly. He dragged Hiei to his car and shot after the ambulance with Eclipse and her convertible on his tail. Koenma fumed for a minute before vanishing.

They reached the hospital at the same time as the ambulance (yes, they did. They went the same speed and cut through traffic and everything), and watched as Shadow was pushed into the hospital on a stretcher, complaining the entire time.

"I can walk, you know! This stretcher stinks! It's making me dizzy to look at the clouds! Wahhh!"

Hiei jogged up to them. "Whatever you do, don't give her a sedative."

"Why?"

"She... er... has a bad reaction."

"That's odd. I've never heard of anyone having a bad reaction to a sedative."

"Shadow is an exception to all rules of normality," Hiei said. "Believe me. You already know she wrecked her motorcycle in such a way that'd kill anyone else, but she survived with a few cuts... Um... And a, uh, broken rib, yeah... And, er... well... Maybe a zillion other injuries that are fatal and... will cause a long, drawn-out... suffering... painful death?" he said nervously, realizing that if he pointed out that she'd survived next-to-unharmed they would get suspicious of her and do more tests than necessary.

"Hiei, you're mean! Do you want me to die?" Shadow asked, sitting up. The paramedic pushed her down on the stretcher.

"Please, miss, relax."

"But... What're you gonna do?"

"We'll just take a few x-rays... scans... That sort of thing."

"Oh. Then in that case, don't be alarmed if my brain doesn't show up on those," Shadow said casually. The man just shook his head.

Hiei trailed after the paramedics as they took her into the hospital and got a doctor to take her to a room for further examination. When the man tried to tell Hiei he had to stay in the hall, the little demon glared at him with such persuading evil that the guy let him hover in the corner of the room. Kurama and Eclipse were left to stand in the hallway.

"You'll have to take off your jacket and your gloves," the man told her.

"... I don't wanna," Shadow said, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

"You have to, miss. You might be injured."

"I'm not injured," she said. "If I were injured I wouldn't be so calm about all this. I'd be jumping up and down screaming."

"...If you were injured you _couldn't_ jump up and down screaming..."

"_I_ could. I have magical powers like that."

"Please, take off your jacket."

"Noooo!"

"Shadow," Hiei said.

"Yes sir?"

"Do what the guy says."

"But..."

"Koenma's gonna tear you apart anyway, you might as well not make it any worse. He might end up stomping all over your shredded body..."

"Eek."

The doctor looked curiously at Hiei, but didn't say anything as Shadow took off her jacket, revealing a red spaghetti-strap shirt underneath.

"Look! No injuries!"

The doctor sighed. "You need X-rays and I'd like to run a CAT scan..."

"A _what_ scan? I hate cats!"

The doctor chuckled. Lucky for him he'd had more difficult patients than Shadow... "A CAT scan has nothing to do with the animals. It's a scan of your body to see if there's any damage to your brain or other organs."

"I haven't got a brain."

"What's your name?"

"Shadow."

"Well, Shadow, everyone has a brain. It's just whether we use it or not that counts."

"I'm an exception to all rules of normality. Anyway, I don't need any scans! I'm not hurt! The paramedical staff said so."

"They can only tell so much. You may have internal injuries that will have a fatal effect later."

"Sounds lovely. But I don't. 'Cause I'd know if I did."

"No you wouldn't... Now tell me, do you have any pains at all?"

"Well, unless we count _you_ as a pain in the butt, no," Shadow said.

The doctor sighed. "Are you sure?"

"No! My eyes! They're about to pop out of my head! Blood will spurt out the empty sockets until my body is dried up and shriveled on the floor like a raisin! Oh my god! We're all going to die!" Shadow fell off the bed and lay on the ground, motionless with a look of horror on her face.

The doctor gasped and knelt next to her. He took her pulse and checked her breathing. "Shadow? Shadow! Are you okay?" He lifted her stiff body up and laid her on the bed. Then he turned to Hiei. "What's wrong with her?"

"Absolutely nothing," Hiei said, walking over. "Snap out of it!" He slapped her across the face.

"Ow!" Shadow yelped, sitting bolt upright and rubbing her cheek. "That hurt, kisama!" Hiei just shrugged.

"Excuse me, can I talk to you in the hall?" the doctor said to Hiei. The man didn't give him time to reply and he was practically dragged out of the room. Outside, the doctor cast a glance at Kurama and Eclipse and pulled Hiei down the hall a ways.

"How you treat your daughter is unacceptable."

"Shadow isn't my daughter. She's my friend."

"Hell of a friend you are! She's injured and you're threatening her and hitting her! I'm afraid I'll have to report you to the abuse office."

"Abuse office? And when did I threaten her?"

"Who is 'Koenma?'"

"Our boss, stupid!"

"You're an adult. You're clearly stronger than her, you're a man, and you should know how to treat a young girl like her."

"Don't tell me how to treat my friends. She'd treat me the same. We're friends, nothing can break that. And some stupid doctor can't tell me how to treat her. You have no idea how I treat her. You have no room to judge me." Hiei pushed past him and went back down the hall towards Shadow's room.

"Hey! Stop, you can't go back in there!"

"Don't tell me what to do."

But before Hiei reached the door, it opened just enough for Shadow, back in her full leather, to slip out. She looked both ways at her friends on either side and ran down the hall.

"Hey! Where are you going?!" the doctor shouted, giving chase. Hiei stood calmly while Kurama and Eclipse went after Shadow, and when the doctor ran by, he tripped him. The guy sailed down the hall and slid a few feet when he hit the polished, sanitized tile floor. Hiei then ran down the hall after his friends.

They escaped successfully from the hospital and found Koenma waiting for them at the end of the street where Kurama had parked.

"I see you managed to draw plenty of civilian attention, too," he said unhappily.

"Yes, but there wasn't much of a plan," Kurama said. "Shadow just left the room and ran when the doctor was lecturing Hiei."

"Why was the doctor lecturing Hiei?" Koenma asked, looking at Hiei.

"Because I 'treat my friends badly' I suppose," Hiei replied, shrugging. "I don't know what his deal is."

"Go home. Your bike, by the way Shadow, is impounded."

"It's what?" Shadow asked cluelessly.

"The cops have it. Because you'd left and they had pinpointed from witnesses that you had caused the entire wreck and you'd been riding it. I suppose I could get it out for you, but you'll have to do something in return..."

"... It doesn't involve life in a garbage can, does it?"

"...Er..."

"Is she gonna have to perform sexual favors for you," Hiei translated.

"NO! No! Gross, no, nothing like that!" Koenma said, sickened. "You'll just have to, for one, not ride the thing for a month, and for two, you're going to take George's place as my faithful-but-relatively-useless-right-hand, um... person."

"What? For how long?!"

"A month. You'll be in Reikai for a month and therefore you won't be riding your motorcycle for that stretch of time."

Shadow seemed to think. They waited for about two minutes before Koenma decided that something was wrong. She'd never thought that long before. He snapped his fingers in front of her face. Her head dropped down and she stared at the ground, snoring.

"She's asleep!"

"...With her eyes open," Hiei said, tipping back her head to look at her face. "How odd."

She continued snoring and eventually had to be tossed in the back seat of Kurama's car and driven back to Tokyo (mostly over many detour roads due to the backups and whatnot her wreck had caused).

**. . . . . . . One Month Later . . . . . . . .**

"I CAN'T BELIEVE I SPENT THE PAST MONTH OF MY LIFE RUNNING ERRANDS FOR KOENMA!" Shadow wailed, throwing herself onto Hiei and hugging him and sobbing on his shoulder. "THAT WAS THE BIGGEST WASTE OF A MONTH I'VE EVER ENDURED, AND THAT INCLUDES THAT TIME I DIDN'T LEAVE MY HOUSE FOR A MONTH!"

Hiei patted her back comfortingly, looking over her shoulder at Koenma, who'd just delivered her back home five minutes ago. "It's okay, Shadow, we all know working is a pain in the ass."

"AND I DIDN'T EVEN GET PAID, EITHER!"

"You got your motorcycle back, didn't you?"

"AND I HAVEN'T SEEN _YOU_ FOR A _MONTH_!!!" Shadow shouted, grabbing Hiei's shoulders and staring at him. "I'M SO HAPPY TO SEE YOU!"

"Glad to hear it..."

Shadow hugged him. "I missed you!"

"Nice to hear you missed us, too, Shadow," Kurama said. He, Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Eclipse were standing or sitting around the room as well, but Shadow had instantly latched onto Hiei when she walked in the door.

"Nice to see you, Kurama," Shadow said. "And Eclipse and I guess Yusuke, but I could go another month without seeing Kuwabara."

"Hey!"

"Well, it's true! I'd rather see Koenma than you... Actually... After seeing him for about 20 hours a day for thirty days, I'd almost rather see you, Kuwabara... But not if anyone more appealing is around."

"Like Hiei?"

"Like Hiei!" Shadow continued with her Hiei-hugging for a few more minutes before she just randomly decided to thank Koenma for giving her her motorcycle back.

"Thankee!" she said.

"Uh-huh... I'll be going now. It'll be a nice relief to get away from your complaining for a while." Koenma went out the door and vanished.

"Yippee!" Shadow cheered. "Now help me solve my dilemma everyone! Should I spend a little while longer with Hiei or go ride my motorcycle?"

"Thanks, Shadow," Hiei muttered, but only she heard him through Yusuke's shout of, "MAKE OUT!"

"This is the only time I'll actually listen to Yusuke," Shadow said, grinning at Hiei. He shrugged.

"Oh please," Eclipse said as they, for the millionth time in this story (GADDAMMIT!), kissed. Yusuke, however, watched happily through the small screen on Shadow's camcorder...

"Wow... You should go work for Koenma more often, Shadow, if you get that kind of kiss every time you get back..." Yusuke said. "And Hiei... I'm afraid of you."

"KISAMA! You taped that!?" Shadow yelped.

"What? Yeah. Not like it matters, it's your camera and we all watched anyway."

"Gimme that!" Shadow snapped, snatching her camera back.

"It's better to tape you making out with Hiei than, for example, a pillow," Yusuke said, looking meaningfully at Kuwabara.

"What?" the baka said, a blank, retarded look on his face.

"Never mind."

Shadow, however, had gotten distracted after he'd pointed that out because she'd rewinded it and was watching herself kiss Hiei on the little screen.

"Damn," Hiei muttered. "It makes me look all soft-hearted... No more kissing."

"No more kissing in public," Shadow corrected distractly. "I look... Kinda bleh."

"Kinda bleh? You look fine."

"...I still think I should dye your hair blonde."

"No, for the love of God, Shadow! No hair dye!"

"Fine, okay, okay... No permanent hair dye..."

"NO hair dye. NONE, permanent or not."

"Aw, damn! Man, you're mean to me."

"I'm mean to you?" Hiei said incredulously, pointing at the camcorder. "What were you just watching?"

"You being _really_ nice to me."

"There you go."

"Can I dye your hair with the stuff that washes out after one shower?"

"_No!_"

"Why not?!"

"We went through this already, Shadow."

"Go through it again!"

Hiei just let out an exasperated groan and walked away.

"Hmph. Twit."

"...Blonde?" Kurama said finally.

"Yeah!" Shadow said cheerfully. "Wouldn't he look good blonde?"

"I don't know these things, Shadow."

"And I think Yusuke would look kinda okay with a moustache... I tried to convince Hiei to grow a moustache but he was hardly willing. So I fixed up a nice picture on the computer..."

Shadow skipped over to the computer, clicked a few things, and a picture of a blonde, moustached Hiei wearing a pink shirt appeared on the screen. Yusuke and Kuwabara went into fits of hysterical laughter, Kurama snorted and choked to cover up laughter, and Eclipse ended up on the ground crying and gasping for breath.

"And that's part of the reason I won't dye my hair, too," Hiei said, leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed.

"Fine, I won't nag you anymore..." Shadow said, stepping over Eclipse and walking over to him. "I'll just force you to."

"No you won't!"

Shadow pulled a bottle out of her pocket. "Yes I will."

"Shit." Hiei darted past her and out the door.

"GIT BACK HERE!"

"NO!"

A high speed chase occurred and it eventually ended with Shadow lying spread-eagle on her front lawn after running all the way around Tokyo, gasping for breath as Hiei stood above her grinning and holding the bottle of hair dye.

"Fine. You win. You're not gonna be a blonde," she panted.

"Glad to hear it," Hiei said, pocketing the dye and walking away.

"Thanks for helping me up, too!" Shadow shouted at him.

"You're welcome!" he replied over his shoulder.

"I hate you!"

"Arright!"

"GO AWAY!"

"I already am away!"

Shadow grumbled something and continued lying in the grass for several hours until it started raining and she found herself drenched and locked out of the house.

Well, that's it.

Up until the crash two weeks after her birthday, Shadow's sixteenth year in existence had been happy. But then it started downhill and I think it can only get worse... In fact, as authoress, I KNOW it can only get worse.  
But it could get better, you never know.

Wait. I just said I know. Dammit. Oh well! Ha. Ha. Haaa... Well, ja mata!

**- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -  
Weelll... Done with yet another story, thanks for reading... A new one will be on the way... Sometime. I'd really prefer to get at least halfway done with it before I start posting it but I think it's gonna be pretty long, so... I dunno.**


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